The Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction short stories of Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Welcome back to the Infobahn Chronicle Channel! My name is Kari R. Wade and I’m coming to you live from Staten Island with a local news story that’s gaining national and international attention.

Before I begin, I need to issue the following warning: Tonight’s news story contains adult themes, possible sexual content, and strong language. If you are sensitive to any of these, please proceed at your own discretion. Furthermore, the opinions expressed during this broadcast, especially those from the people joining the live chat, do not necessarily reflect the views of the channel.

As previously mentioned, there’s a local story and by local I mean Staten Island, New York, where I broadcast from, involving a wife and husband, both of them nudists and professional photographers, who took nude photographs of their 10-year-old daughter and had them framed and placed on various walls of their house along with other photographs which were not all nudes and no there were other underage models. One day, one of the girl’s friends from school visits the house and sees her friend’s naked photos and when she gets home she tells her mother who promptly calls the police. With a warrant, the police confiscate the nude photos of the little girl and the couple is now facing child pornography charges.

Do you agree with this? Or can you see the parents’ point of view that the nude photographs of their daughter were art?

As I consider all of you my cohosts, I’m opening up the chatline to get your thoughts on the matter. As always, while I do believe in the freedom of expression and will air your content as is, this is a safe space everyone to express their opinions and hate speech and bully will not be tolerated.

Ah, we have our first contributor:

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Casino_Royale: I have photos of all my children in the tub at play when they were younger. I love the shots. I think they are joyful and innocent and all things good concerning childhood but I wouldn’t hang those photos in a public space for anyone walking around my home to view for several reasons.

First among them being my children’s embarrassment. Second, the fact that the world we live in is full of some very strange humans that may not think them so harmless. Maybe someone looking at them isn’t seeing them in the light for which they were meant. Bringing attention to my child to that person is easily avoided by not displaying the photos. Artistically it sucks, I know, but it is as it is.

GILF57: I agree but let’s not forget the child is 10. That’s usually past the age that you refer to as joyful tub photos. I have a 13-year-old girl and we stopped taking those kinds of photos at around age 5. A big part of the law surrounding child porn has to do with the fact that the victim cannot legally give consent. I think if the parents weren’t into child porn, they showed remarkably poor judgment.

LarrytheAbleGuy: Like pornography, I can’t define art, but I know it when I see it. Without seeing it, I am with GILF57. Naked baby, maybe. Naked 10-year-old, fishy, or at least, remarkably imprudent, given the current climate.

NYCer4evr: How about giving those folks the benefit of the doubt? Having said that, Art is incredibly subjective, as is common sense at times, unfortunately.

Grimly: They should have known better but like Batman once said: “Hindsight is often better than foresight.” It’s hard for me to speak to the judgment of those parents. Perhaps they have strong convictions that conflict with the prevailing social standard. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

Sisterectomy: It’s child pornography.

Spam_I_Am: As Larry implies, the “current climate” is pretty puritanical when it comes to this sort of thing. Like Grimly, I cannot presume to know the parents’ philosophy and attitude from this distant vantage point. Nonetheless, I do agree with some others who suggest that their judgment about displaying them in a place potentially open to viewing by non-family-members may have not been particularly wise, given the puritanical attitudes that are so prevalent these days in the USA.

But I really cannot fathom how someone can immediately proclaim “child pornography” without any better insight than I into this matter. I presume that such a person would automatically assume that a child raised in a naturist environment is automatically and continuously a victim of sexual abuse then? That is an unfathomable position to me.

The mere fact that a child is photographed unclothed does not mean that photograph is child porn, any more than a nude picture of an adult is automatically pornographic. To me, the demarcation between “art/document” and “abuse” is a lot higher than the mere existence of the private image.

More than 20 some odd years ago a fine-art photographer by the name of Jock Sturges was raided and investigated by the FBI over allegations that some of his work was child porn. The charges were eventually dropped. Ironically he became a bit of a lightning-rod for silly attempts to censor artists and gained quite a bit of notoriety over this.

Bottom line for me: people need to tone down the hysteria and do a lot more to establish motive and intent before jumping to crazy premature conclusions.

Kindhrtd: Not having any children of my own, I can more easily be broadminded about some of these issues without feeling either of my knees jerking. I’m not sure how much weight I would put on the parents intent…its the end result that to me is important. I think a better solution to the problem would be to take the parents aside and strongly suggest that any such photos remain away from public view.

And of course, someone needs to have a conversation with the child. I agree with a number of commenters who feel like we don’t have enough information to make a determination. Just saying that the photos were of a nude child is not in and of itself enough. There have been many tasteful full nude photos on the covers of magazines in recent years (such as the expectant mothers on Vanity Fair) and I don’t think we can immediately claim that such photos are porn.

mommie_mia: I have two children of my own and also some “cute” pictures like the ones mentioned here, I believe all parents can appreciate proud parents wanting to display pics, but nude child photos are a parents memento, not for anyone who walks down the hall. Children are to be cherished and protected not displayed for all.

WitchrBadSelf: I am sure the parents did not mean ill, or pedophilia. However, 10 is too old, I didn’t take any naked shots after age 2. And hanging them in the house is a mistake, also. However, I hope it isn’t a mistake they have to pay too dearly for.

Grimly: Sally Mann is another prominent artist who has been challenged for photographing (her own) children in the nude, as has Bill Hensen, an Australian photographer who earned the wrath of the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd:

This is simply not an issue that can be disposed of easily or in a glib manner. Children should be protected. The freedom of artistic expression should be protected. Whenever our values come into conflict with each other, as inevitably they will, our response should not be to throw down gauntlets or prosecute, our response should be to come together, speak, listen, and collaborate.

Felicity: At age 10 it was, at the very least, wildly inappropriate. Art, perhaps, but the needs of the child are far more important than the artistic needs of the parents. It is a question of precedence.

DoverClover: Very poor taste and I question the parents’ sanity. Would they have their daughter walk nude into a room with people outside the family in it?

FromtheHip: There is no way this is legitimate “child porn” under any valid interpretation of laws in the USA, though twisting laws to perpetuate false arrests and malicious persecutions is a tactical goal of Rabid Religious wRong (RRR) organizations and those who arrogantly or cluelessly act on their instigation.

Kari, message me privately if these are friends who’d like help contacting any of the public interest law organizations or naturist and nudist activist leaders I know who may be able to help with legal resources, tactical advice, or filing Amicus support if they end up engaged in serious litigation.

What needs to happen in a case like this isn’t generally possible, but the friend and her parents who went to police, the cops involved, and the judge signing the warrant, need to be prosecuted as felons for conspiracy to deprive civil rights under color of law, and relevant parties sued for damages for false arrest or malicious prosecution or impeached and disbarred, ending government careers. The parents deserve a child abuse investigation for indoctrinating a kid to be incapable of respecting neighbor’s civil rights and likely to lack coping skills for our diverse society, quite possibly due to active parental and possible church or similar abuse and not merely negligent parenting.

As others have mentioned, there is a certain amount of case law that treats images like this as protected speech, not just in private noncommercial family surroundings or under some age, but as commercially published coffee table book or gallery quality life figure art, where lesser civil rights tests may attach (“intermediate scrutiny” rather than “strict scrutiny”) because of court interpretations of businesses not being citizens. That exists both for artists and photographers, and for book importers (eg, ALESSANDRA’S SMILE) and resellers, as well as private persons. Some of that case law can be found in this specialized law library, including cases not widely known to most counsel:

Kari, in what jurisdiction did this case occur? Do you know what specific charges have been filed? Is the Gestapo-like abuse of child protective services common to many jurisdictions also involved?

Of course law is strategic, tactical, and often deals with corrupt parties in all of black robes, blue suits we hand badges, guns, and truncheons, and prosecutor’s offices, especially in states where judges and prosecutors are elected rather than appointed employees, or where RRR related bigotry and subversion of government is common.

What is nothing more than a barely tolerable outcome in terms of Constitutional law may involve various time, money, and stress limits as well as the risk of a malfunctioning court not upholding the law due to various defects and prejudices prompting legal tactics that are far from adequate. Ideally, this kind of case calls for aggressive action against its instigators and perpetrators, from the other kid and her parents, through government agents largely immune due to sovereign immunity as if some king’s henchmen. A not guilty or dismissal, followed by a civil suit for false arrest, and recovery of legal costs and fees, plus the record of having done that to protect others (albeit only slightly), is likely a best possible real-world outcome. How far are these victims willing to go upholding the rule of law, versus just trying to cut and run?

It’s ludicrous to have laws that are so susceptible to abuse as are present kiddie porn laws. It sounds as if this is a case of hyper-aggressive bigots and thugs acting to lynch an entire family, as a result of prejudices and bigotry contrary to the rule of civil rights law for the USA. It’s fully legal for the acts of modeling or family lives or nudists and naturists to exist regardless of age and to photograph those.

Persons whose bigotry is so incompatible with respecting or at least tolerating neighbors living within their rights deserve to be prevented from abusing kids with those pathologies. Our government has an obligation to prevent this kind of lynching and never engage in malicious or reckless conspiracies to use violent force or threat thereof to create chilling illegal prior restraint against legal and protected speech or actions, as this case appears to be.

I also note that the most disrespectful of civil rights and clueless about US law comment so far in this thread comes from a government agent, who we fund and trust to use violent force potentially depriving other victims of civil rights. It’s overdue that corrupt criminal gangs we fund as the government be treated as worse crime problems, both personally and as organizations, than far less abusive non-government gangs of thugs or their members. End sovereign immunity and those willing to uphold the rule of civil rights law can be empowered to drive malicious thugs out of positions of power if they seriously abuse them.

Kindhrtd: I’m not at all sure I agree with everything that FromtheHip said…cuz he said A LOT…but DAMN, that boy has balls with a capital B!

Spam_I_Am: I should add to my last comment about establishing “motive and intent” and the word “harm.” Surely you can harm your children despite having good intentions, and it’s still child abuse. I just don’t see any evidence for jumping to that conclusion here based on the information we’ve been given so far.

For the same reasons I think it’s inadvisable to go bombing foreign countries just because they thumbed their nose at you once, I agree with Grimly that the first reaction in these sorts of cases should be dialogue, fact-finding and collaboration, instead of trying to be the first and loudest one to scream “off with their heads!”

Grimly: The bedrock of this issue is not a legal dispute, it’s a human one. Legal remedies seduce us because they promise a decisive outcome. They promise justice. The real stakes here cannot ever be decided in a court, however.

Baroness: I have to say I am with FromtheHip. If this was a situation where the child was or felt abused it would be different.

Topaz: Agree with Grimly’s point of view, not enough info.

Quietasitzkept: If anyone has actually seen Sally Mann’s work, it clearly isn’t pornographic. Disturbing, but by no means abusive or sexual. Sturges walks a much finer line, much more charged imagery, and was still let off. Photos of your own prepubescent child? As presented, it sure doesn’t sound pornographic. Stupid to hang on your wall, probably, but the parents’ sense of judgment isn’t the issue. Did it harm the kids? That’s the important question, which isn’t answered here.

FromtheHip: The fact that this has been already made a serious legal case means that it needs resolution as a legal case. It became something that is far from ideal and reflects pathologies of our society itself to tolerate the way hate cults endorse abusive parents indoctrinating kids in ways fundamentally incompatible with any diverse Western society, and authorities willing to turn into adrenalin junkies on any excuse to abuse power.

A lawyer friend calls me a tusked boar for some of the focused tactical redress I find needed in cases like this. To tolerate an atmosphere of chilling prior restraint this kind of case reflects can amount to an overall higher level of violence than taking out the thugs causing it, with one wrongful violence in small pieces, the other more concentrated force to uphold core legal standards.

It’s needed to do that to other parents who millions would view as normal for indoctrinating EITHER overt RRR hate cult OR institutionalized bigotry counterparts they may not consciously recognize themselves doing, such that the friend had the reactions she did. It’s needed to show that cops when they act as little more than mercenary thugs, politicians as mob bosses, and intermediate bureaucrats, can be held personally liable under the SAME legal standards that limit protections to corporate employees and officers, rather than be above the law. “Bivens” precedent for when it’s legal to personally as well as officially sue criminal cops, or exterminate bad cops perpetrating felonies many state laws say don’t qualify for lawful self-defense against cop perp’s, is far from adequate legal process.

It takes 3-5 generations to help masses of people adapt to small chunks of social changes as became overdue in full overnight in 1868 when the 14th Amendment extended the Bill of Rights inside states before our society diversified exponentially before ever catching up to 1868 law. In law on these issues, justice delayed is justice denied, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That’s a chicken and egg mess, where legal remedies need to enable and pressure expedited social progress, but where social progress is needed before legal remedies are fully functional.

Anthony Romero’s boyfriend’s dad had an interesting experience at his business with his efforts to simply display what he thought was interesting art to make for a less dreary workplace. He found that insurance clerks complained that abstract life form pastels on the walls caused them to feel the workplace was hostile (not so clearly expressed, of course), while moving the same art to a boardroom and executive suites resulted in either no responses or positive comments from generally better educated and more intelligent employees or visitors to his large insurance company.

Besides Progressive Insurance’s general support of arts, they’ve also been a benefactor to the ACLU of over $30 million in donations, and that along with the Bush regime’s abuses motivating a more than doubling of ACLU membership have increased resources to assist this kind of victim of abuse of legal process.

Difficult as it may be, full enforcement of long-standing civil rights law interpreted based on current and honest societal fact, needs to be the yardstick for what kids need to be raised to have skills to live within and around. Monoculture supremacists, whether from hate cult dogma or gross lack of challenging adult and parenting skills, push an impossible paradox that civil rights should be restricted to reduce conflicts between their dictum and their kids lacking skills to deal in the real world of many conflicting life practices of neighbors (resulting in dysphoria & cognitive dissonance).

Alongside the obligation to use broad civil rights-related actions existing openly in society, religious or equivalent monoculture coercion cannot work in a diverse society, as even groups like Baptists or Mormons or Muslims have vicious feuds within themselves over which version of hate cult dogma to coerce on others. The best options for those who lack core parenting skills for the severe challenges of adapting kids to a diverse society with much chaos and complexity is to either not have kids, or pick their favorite Sharia court country and move there.

As to legal process, of course, a detailed finding and creation of a record of fact is important to this kind of case. In theory that’s what cops were required to do before filing for a warrant, and could not have done honestly based on the OP’s stated issues above. There are serious legal seminars on child porn with some rather disgusting examples that these cops should have attended before this kind of action.

There are also tactical seminars for prosecutors and cops to learn dirty tricks to circumvent the law and perpetrate malicious actions over legal speech, which arguably deserve to be found having a nexus to this kind of abuse and treated as instrumentalities of civil rights felonies, rather than protected religious or political speech. This result being an abuse of power backed by gunpoint gang is wrong whether the cops acted based on malice or negligence in professional and legal competency.

GILF57: Most of you have skipped the important fact here: these laws are made to protect the child(ren). The parents are collateral damage. While I can sympathize with them and hope that this is all a big misunderstanding or witch-hunting, the fact is that the child cannot ever give consent and any damage to her may not be known for years. I have known several victims of child sexual abuse. The damage may not show up for a decade and they never get over it.

Spam_I_Am: None of which excuses rushing to judgment. The real debatable issue here, to me, is what constitutes “harm.” I believe certain factions expand the definition of it to help them promulgate their personal agenda.

I think it would serve us all well to try to come up with a concrete definition, something other than “it might show up 10 years later, maybe.” Sounds like a blank check to me.

I also find it somewhat offensive to excuse any over-reaching legal action by claiming that it’s OK to breach this person or group’s rights (who have not been proven to have done anything illegal) in order to allegedly protect this other individual or group.

EVERYONE’s civil, legal and human rights should be respected and protected, until such time as it is very clear that someone has squandered certain of those rights by committing a crime.

Nana:@Spam_I_Am, I am astonished that you do not see the harm to a 10-year-old girl in this scenario. As a parent of a 12-year-old male, I think these parents should have put the photos under wraps years ago. Like, when they were 6-ish, and no longer babies.

@FromtheHip, you are an ass. And probably a pedophile, since you seem to have thought this issue through so seriously.

Sisterectomy: AMEN, Nana!

GILF57: I also find it somewhat offensive to excuse any over-reaching legal action by claiming that it’s OK to breach this person or group’s rights (In best Georgian accent) Like Jimmy Carter used to say, “Life, is unfair.”

Sisterectomy: @Grimly – The mental & physical damage a pedophile inflicts on a child in the pursuit of pleasure and what he calls “Love” and often “Art” is PERSONAL when you have children of your own. There’s not a parent out there who doesn’t feel a tug on their heart when they hear of a case and they don’t even get the real story. The real life facts are hideous and frightening. So Hell Yeah Man, it’s Personal.

Spam_I_Am: I don’t see the harm unless it is apparent the child feels harmed. I already said it was probably bad judgment on the part of the parents to have those photos in a place accessible to non-family-members.

I have known many victims of child sexual abuse – a number of them among my closest friends. Assuming that I have no compassion for people who’ve been through such things, simply because of what has been said here is dangerously presumptuous.

However, I draw massive distinctions between someone who, for example, was systematically and brutally raped by a parent for years on end, and some superficial hearsay about some nude pictures on some family’s wall, without knowing the slightest about the family, it’s history and dynamics.

If people think that presumptively and traumatically tearing up a family over such things – without any consideration about how healthy the overall environment was and how happy the children are, is better than simply sitting down with the parents and discussing, for example, the wisdom of having such photos on public display, then I don’t think there’s anything left I can say.

Spam_I_Am: The problem with that last point, Sisterectomy, is that you don’t have the facts in this case. Why you act like you do is a mystery.

No one is trying to argue that pedophilia is wrong or damaging to children. The point in this discussion is whether this case seems to meet the definition of pedophilia. I would like to see someone discuss in detail why they think it does, and how one ascertains damage/harm.

Because if it’s going to be a legal issue (as it already has become apparent and must be if the adult’s parental rights are being taken away), then it presumably has to meet the legal standard of either “pedophilia” or “child endangerment”. If someone would care to quote the legal definitions as applies to the locale in question, and how this case qualifies, I’d be interested to hear that.

Baroness: You’re opening a can of worms by deciding as an outside party that something relatively neutral is automatically a sign of abuse. Maybe it can raise a flag, but it is not an indication of abuse alone. By creating a tone of indecency around what might have been perceived as perfectly natural for the child, you’re completely warping any concept of normalcy or happiness in her future. It is not the place of outside parties (particularly uninformed ones on the internet) to decide children have been abused – and a lot of these crazy cases that turn out to be false are precisely that: outside parties who don’t listen to the children.

By no means am I somehow trying to minimize abuse victims, and I personally have a lot to say about the topic, but realistically Kari is very neutral. She doesn’t go into detail about the situation and to see people not only assume, but take up arms about something they don’t know anything about is a little disturbing.

Nana: This seems stupid. Can we meet the child? See the photos? Baring that, this is all kind of a joke.

IMO, displaying nude pictures of my 12-year-old child to anyone who happens to be in the room is just wrong. Anyone who does this should be reprimanded, hopefully by their own family and not by the state. Oh and sorry, my family is really fucked up and dysfunctional, so it can’t or will not control itself.

Spam_I_Am: I think it’s safe to say that opinions differ on the general appropriateness of nudity in the home. For example, naturism, as a lifestyle, is perfectly legal across the country. It would seem that the simple adoption of that lifestyle would automatically breach ana’s standard stated above.

So the challenge here, it seems to me, is how to reconcile these disparate views and standards, so that the various members of the community are satisfied. I also think it would be great if someone in the family were to bring up the question of whether the public display of the photos was a good idea. But even if the community/state got involved, it seems like the reasonable thing to do first is to, as Grimly said earlier, engage in a dialogue, rather than rushing to snap judgments.

None of us here have the details, so in a sense, as Baroness says, we’re all just sort of blowing a lot of hot air about it. Clearly, discussions like this are inclined to get emotional and inflammatory and make people quickly take sides, without actually resolving much in terms of specifics.

Baroness: What kind of people do you let in your house? I mean the daughter is inviting friends over and doesn’t display any behavior indication she has a problem with this. I find that to be an interesting indicator of tone. Even if you somehow think these photos would trigger an incident of abuse, you should still question what kind of “display” your private dwelling is on.

GILF57: I have known many victims of child sexual abuse – a number of them among my closest friends. Assuming that I have no compassion for people who’ve been through such things, simply because of what has been said here is dangerously presumptuous.

I didn’t assume you had no compassion if it came across that way, I apologize. What I am trying to get across, is that the needs of the child are paramount and if a mistake is going to be made by the State, it will be made in the child’s favor. Generally speaking, I can live with that.

I mean, the daughter is inviting friends over and doesn’t display any behavior indication she has a problem with this. I find that to be an interesting indicator of tone.

I cannot understand how her behavior is of any consequence. Lots of abuse victims find the situation normal and as I have said now many times, they cannot legally give consent anyway.

There does seem to be a big difference of opinion here by those who are parents and those who are not.

Baroness: This discussion is pointless. Let’s all teach our daughters to fear their bodies and feel only shame.

FromtheHip: One of the problems with lynch mobs rather than responsible citizens addressing these issues, is that the lynch mobs of emotive so-called adults and politicians pandering to them cause NAMBLA to become a legitimate and needed civil rights organization, in addition to a cover for real criminals. Clean up bad laws and the lynch mob mentality behind them, as well as address messy issues of post-pubescent sexuality and consent, plus a side dish of gay bashing, and most of the legitimate public purpose and need for NAMBLA or similar groups disappears. In effect, what many reckless religious or political predators espouse as if “protecting children” becomes a mode of abuse of kids and adults alike.

Pedophilia cannot legitimately be a crime. It’s a medical pathology, that crosses both sides of what’s necessarily a serious boundary for Constitutionally valid law, between thoughts that are legal even if warped, and crimes of actual molestation of specific victims. Beyond that, the term pedophilia is frequently used as an excuse for religiously biased laws to censor openly visible normal human sexuality of post-pubescents and to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, rather than restricted to its long-standing medical definition to depict only adults with an unnatural sexual interest in pre-pubescents. To be valid, laws must be narrowly constructed when they deal with issues of conflicting rights as sexuality relates to both privacy and religion, and must be based on real harm to specific victims rather than pander to broad prejudices of bigots and irrational masses.

As a long term naturist who’s reviewed developmental psychology and social psychology studies of child development comparing nudist and “textile fetishist” raised kids, I know that social prejudices coercing costume compulsion do on average harm kids, whereas nudist parenting practices on average result in teens with 18 months greater developmental maturity in several key areas (personal identity concept, boundaries awareness, decision-making skills) than for their costume-compulsive peers. In fact, indoctrinating kids to be costume-compulsive is a cause of teen suicides and lesser emotional pathologies, when in a “too much is never enough” economics driven culture many teens expect themselves to be not just models with specific body types and huge costume and makeup and salon services budgets, but airbrushed modifications of those. Reliance on Nikes or mall textile costumes to define oneself is far less healthy than mature concepts of a functional human.

I have assisted victims of bad laws defend fraudulent molestation complaints, including one divorce related extortion case where a friend was prosecuted after a psycho girlfriend of the X2B had her husband show the young kids porn videos on what was later found to be stolen video gear that husband was fencing, to enable the sick mother and friend to take the kids to police with the trigger for cops gone wild, worse than Joe Francis rapes, and plant the suggestion, “how would they know this (porn video scenes) unless daddy did something to them?”

I’ve also known “convicted sexual offenders” whose “crime” was having a boyfriend over the state age of sexual consent as teens, a year before unConstitutional laws were repealed or overturned, but not invalidating lynch mob convictions essentially where the crime was being a normal gay teen rather than having same ages heterosexual partners.

Lesbians have less often been targets of equivalent due process and other rights violations, also a form of due process violation by corrupt politicians and lynch mob voters and jurors. That’s not to say there isn’t long term harm decades later to victims of real molestation, and I’ve known some of those too, but that use of legal process for malicious or wantonly negligent civil rights abuses is unjustifiable subversion of government into the role of violent criminals.

For nudist and naturist families, as well as liberal arts involved communities, costumes are no more than that, or occupational task safety tools. To presume otherwise as many people do is often an excuse to wrongfully attempt to impose personal prejudices on others, or sidestep responsible parenting of kids who almost necessarily will be exposed and have to live alongside people of very different ideologies and practices than their own families.

That’s where sorting out legitimate causes of cognitive dissonance and dysphoria as real emotional consequences of values conflicts and life skills, from presumed religious or social bigotry based “standards” that are little more than personal or subculture preferences or prejudices, is essential to the rational development of legitimate public policy and law. Most people never spend adequate time inspecting their own issues of that nature, never mind looking at society broadly. As such, they’re less than competent as parents, or citizens. As our society continues to diversify, the importance of changing that grows rapidly.

It’s an old quote from a dead guy, but remains true: “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are not even capable of forming such opinions.” — Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions

In our society, we need to see most people doing what old Albert suggested most people are incapable of doing. Were we to restrict baby hatching to adults with those developed faculties, we could easily reverse overpopulation related aspects of global warming. That kind of bias could be far more easily justified in public policies in tax codes and otherwise, than present ones that result in de facto dysgenics, where the only current USA positive birth rates are to the lowest IQ demographics of baby hatchers unlikely to be competent parents in this complex society.

BTW, presumably, you meant no one is claiming “pedophilia” (in the commonly used erroneous definition?) is NOT wrong or damaging? As discussed above, IMHO that needs to be refined among medical pathology and thought policing versus criminal law restricted to actual molestation of pre-pubescents, also separating out consent issues for teens who under many religious and cultural standards even if not some legal “bright lines” are sexual adults entitled to rights as such.

Spam_I_Am: What I see is certain people refusing to support their position other than trying to be divisive (by trying to divide the participants into opposing teams), or by throwing out non-sequiturs like “life is unfair sometimes”, or “it’s just collateral damage”.

I have a funny feeling that the writer of those things would be rather outraged if I had used the same phrases in response to the idea that children should be protected from pedophiles.

Grimly: Count me as an experienced parent, for what that’s worth.

@FromtheHip, I have to confess that I struggle with the long monologue form as an effective way to connect with someone who might not see eye to eye with you. I mean, we could spend hours just on the issue of how society might shift behavior from the legal to the medical arena, but you bring up a whole lot more than that in a single post.

Nana: ok, as far as sexism goes, I say again: MY SON (12) DOES NOT THINK THAT NUDE PICTURES PAST 3 YEARS OF AGE SHOULD BE DISPLAYED IN PUBLIC. We are a progressive, liberal, way more tolerant family than most in the Midwest. WE LISTEN TO OUR SON WHEN HE TELLS US WHAT IS APPROPRIATE.

Baroness: That’s your son’s opinion. And good for you for listening to him. But frankly, it does sound like you have influenced his opinion.

It is not a premise for judging this situation. Who here asked the girl how she felt about it?

JJBirdy: My son (who is 2) has many naked pics because he’s my nature boy who enjoys a good undressed romp in the well-enclosed backyard of his grandparents’ house. That said, I haven’t posted any of these exposed pictures on the walls nor have I posted them on any of my social sites where I post many pictures. I think the taking of the photos was not for the intent of being pornographic but it wasn’t a good idea to use them as art on the wall, especially since the child is 10. So calling them child pornographers is a bit much.

FeelTheForce: Interesting. I’d say that if the couple were to hide the photos and only look at them secretly and in private then it would be porn. Having them hanging in their home, I bet they viewed them as art.

As others have pointed out, It is difficult to say without seeing the photos. Maybe it was obvious in the photos that she was nude, but no “private” parts were showing? we just don’t know all the facts here.

As a side note, I am appalled at the fact that we’re calling each other pedophiles based upon a few comments in this thread. Can’t we have a simple discussion without name calling? Good lord people.

TeaLibby: I don’t think this is pornography. Any parent has taken a picture of their children nude. I have a few of my own. I have to agree with FromtheHip on this issue as well. What’s done in my house, dammit, leave it alone. Now if I sell the photos or post them on the internet for perverts to check out, in the sense, it might be porn. Otherwise, leave my photos alone.

Petalblossom: Simply said: None of us can determine the nature of these pictures since we cannot see them. That said, it’s doubtful they’re pornographic since they were on display in public areas of the home. See, no emotion first.

Ivy_Inverness: Petal is correct. The presumption of innocence has been lost here altogether. Also, I believe in protecting children, but the “moralistic” swing away from individual rights is appalling. As many others have stated, insufficient information to make an informed judgment. Those who jumped up and screamed, “pornography” with such scanty evidence are the same folks who believe in lynching without a trial.

Valkyrie: I think there are several issues to untangle here, and I’ll try and do that, and give my opinion on each.

1) Is taking nude photos of a 10 year old automatically pornographic?

I would say, no. Depends on the context, what the child is doing in the photo, whether the image is sexualized and whether the child feels comfortable.

2) Is it a good idea to take such photos?

Probably not.

3) Is it a good idea to publicly display and/or distribute the photos?

Definitely not, and very possibly illegal as well. Not sure how child pornography is legally defined.

Someone I know is now on the sex offenders register because she took a photo of her 7-year-old nephew playing in the garden in the nude, and had it reported by the developer.

4) Is it damaging for children to be photographed in the nude?

If they are comfortable with it, and not because they are victims of sexual abuse and so conditioned to it, if it is not a sexual picture, and if it is not displayed or distributed to cause them embarrassment, then I don’t see why it should be damaging.

Grimly: Kari actually presented a choice, and we are focusing on one side at the expense of the other. Would it be helpful to use an example that anyone can see for themselves? The photographs of Sally Mann are for sale at artnet.com.

Valkyrie: I wouldn’t class the Sally Mann’s as pornographic, although I imagine there are pedophiles who would find them arousing. Personally, I find things like children wearing t-shirts saying things like ‘boy toy’ much more disturbing.

DrinkenDrive: It strikes me as quite a strange thing to do and possibly embarrassing for the kids to have those pictures hanging up but child pornography it isn’t unless the kids have more to say about the way the pictures were taken.

Unfortunately, it looks like the US will head the same way as the UK with adults being scared to interact with kids in any way. You only have to look at this discussion to see that it didn’t take long for someone to be implicitly accused of being a pedophile.

CoffeeCopper: There is one small but CRUCIAL detail I didn’t get in the original story. Were these pictures of a naked child, or were they pictures in which the child was naked?

There is a difference between ‘nude’ and ‘naked’. One can pose without their clothes and convey something entirely different than sex, while some women are clothed when they pose in overtly sexual images.

What is pornography? If you define it merely by nudity, Anne Geddes should be arrested, and Betty Page is appropriate for children.

DrinkenDrive: “What is pornography?” To most people, it seems to be “Someone somewhere might get off on it” hence the hysteria over filthy pedophiles hanging out in every conceivable public space possibly recording children.

RunWild: I have children and they are often naked, I think nothing of it. I sometimes have baths with them and they often sleep naked in my bed with me. YIKES! Does that make me a pedophile? Er… I hope not!

I think the police should question the woman who reported them for having a mind that automatically thinks a photo of a naked child is “perverted.” What a sad world we live in.

Warrior_Princess: Ummm, a 10-year-old child’s naked photos, displayed in a place accessible to people other than family members…something sounds wrong in here. Freedom, alternate lifestyle…all that is fine… but are there some limits, somewhere? The world is not a nudist camp…so why display pics in public view? Nope, something wrong with the parents, for sure. I am not saying that they’re pedophiles but they need to develop their social sensitivities and common graces.

Adieu_Mluv: There’s not a parent out there who doesn’t feel a tug on their heart when they hear of a case and they don’t even get the real story.

Regarding legal consents etc, the problem (if there is one) is that until a kid has reached a certain age, it’s their parents that are charged with making decisions in her interest. That’s what society decided is fair. Sadly, too often parents fail to cope appropriately with this important duty. (One could perhaps say their decision making is as poor as that involved in them becoming parents in the first place.) I’m not sure why the parent-child relationship is so hallowed.

If the child is happy to invite people into her home where she knows there’s a picture of herself displayed, and doesn’t cover it up, then I’d have a hard time believing she is remotely affected let alone traumatized, but overblown PC reactions might start to make her feel guilty about not having been ashamed of it, and thus, in fact, cause trauma. True, lots of abuse victims find the situation normal, but lots of people who were not victims also find their situation normal and would be incensed to have others insist otherwise. It’s possible she’s one of those.

It’s sad that even when a kid goes on international TV to say she’s totally fine with her nude photos (as happened in the Australia case), she still gets dismissed as ‘just a kid’ as if she’s too young to know any better.

Underneath our fur and feathers, we are all completely naked, to quote a muppetism! There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. An additional factor in the cases mentioned is that they all involved established professionals. Would it have been better had they taken pictures of someone else’s child instead? What of other professionals who happen to be parents? Could professional doctors be had up for abuse for examining their offspring’s genitals?

I think the issue is not that the parents took photos of their kid and displayed them, it’s that some people are generally uncomfortable with ANY nude pictures of humans between certain ages. It seems to be between about 5 and the age of legal consent for everything. Oh, unless they are pictures in adolescent development texts.

I think naked photos of humans can be artistic, but most attempts at them (moody black and whites) are nothing more than snaps. It was possibly a bit tasteless to display them but plenty of people display tasteless pictures in their homes.

You know what’s even more tasteless, possibly even disgusting, yet widespread, being displayed in millions of homes? Images of a man being tortured to death.

Someone, I forget who, posted: “WE LISTEN TO OUR SON WHEN HE TELLS US WHAT IS APPROPRIATE.”

Really? So then can’t these other parents also listen to their kids when they tell them what they think is appropriate? Or is it that what is ‘appropriate’ for any kid to tell their parents or other adults actually depends entirely on what you think?

PEARL_NEKLESS: I think its also important to note, given the numerous mentions of concern about these pictures being ‘on public display’, that they do in fact appear to be on display only in the privacy of the parents home.

So, the ‘public’ are not exposed to the photographs, only invited guests and friends.

Which, of course, brings up the issue of what is permissible for us to display within the private confines of our own homes and whether or not people who take offense at what we might have hanging on our walls etc, have a right to pursue a legal action against us just because they feel offended as a result of entering our space.

Now knowing that the family are naturists also suggests to me the photographs were almost certainly not ‘pornographic’ in nature. That some people, nonetheless, might find sexual stimulation by viewing said photographs is no reason to charge the photographer with a crime, nor outlaw the taking of such imagery.

Adieu_Mluv: why display pics in public view? Inside one’s own home is “in public view?” Maybe to peeping toms and paparazzi.

Angieplastie: I haven’t read all the comments, so sorry if I repeat anything. Without seeing the pictures, nobody can judge this. If it’s full-frontal, legs-spread, porno-posed nudity, then yes, it’s child porn.

But it could be that you can only see her bare back, for example.

Adieu_Mluv: Is it fair to say that pornography is anything that has been created for the express purposes of sexually titillating or arousing others?

Wonky_Waiter: I lack time, alas, to read all of the comments, but what I’ve read always made sense, as in, there is the principle and the reality. When you make a law for the country, you have to set up some borders, well, some ahead of the real danger.

Like: if you prohibit shooting someone with a gun, you can’t allow people pointing guns at others, even if they won’t ever shoot: how do you know in advance? Then, they had to regulate the toys faking guys: they’ve been used to threaten people and rob them. See what I mean? I can’t say I’m any happier to see any pic of me nude as a baby. I don’t see the point of it: the genitals can be easily covered without making it an ugly photo.

Is murder an art? Is stealing an art? Is torture an art? Is horror an art? Gore? Concentration camps? See? The question is not here. Art is not a cover for just anything. Yes, in these troubled times, let’s be just simple and prudent, instead of getting lost through stupid attempt for philosophy.

If you really want to care about philosophy, search if you should not do something about the poor, the sick, the enslaved people, the homeless, war, etc. That’d make more sense in my eyes than the elitist thinking about such things, like “should we allow nude pics of any kind provided someone finds it’s art?” By luck, the basic worker has better to do of his time, and is, for such matters, smarter than middle-class people, lol.

Kargy_Korvette: It’s pretty much impossible to judge without seeing the photos. Nude doesn’t have to mean pornographic or even erotic.

Grimly: But you can see the photos that Sally Mann took of her children, and not only in the privacy of her home but online. Should Ms. Mann be arrested? It seems to me that the law is inadequate for serving the needs of all concerned.

CoffeeCopper: “Is it fair to say that pornography is anything that has been created for the express purposes of sexually titillating or arousing others?” Only if you want to be sensible or rational about it, Adieu_Mluv. As far as I can tell, people have little interest in rationality.

FromtheHip:“It is no measure of sanity to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jeddu Krishnamurti

It was 1964 that saw Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart become the brunt of jokes that “porn is whatever gives the judge a hard-on” after he penned an opinion in Jacobellis v Ohio explaining why the notion of pornography is so arbitrary and subjective as to evade any valid means of being defined under core principles of US law in common with British law, without reaching additional issues of religious bias that make a later case like FCC v Pacifica Foundation judicial error or malice, as that court later pretended “indecency” was somehow a legal concept rather than an issue of subjective religious prejudice to its roots. Convicted felon-founded Citizens for Decent Literature, inc. was an Amicus party to Jacobellis, and was the first in a string of successor RRR organizations including NFLF, CDC, and ADF that have advocated legal tactics to censor Constitutionally protected speech of others, or Operation Rescue that advocated and organized regional campaigns to send criminal operatives (bastions of national morality) into bookstores and libraries with magic markers and razor knives to vandalize books and art, including among other targets those of Jock Sturges, David Hamilton, and Robert Maplethorpe. At one point, Operation Rescue was convicted under RICO statutes as a criminal mob operation rather than a legitimate religious advocacy group, along with its principals personally, though that mostly reflected their criminal terrorism and lesser crimes against women’s health clinics and their patients.

It’s interesting that most of those calling for criminal persecution of legal speech, or violating THIS SITE and likely their own ISP TOS with libelous accusations of pedophilia, are from the region of the US that brought us Hess v IN and Barnes v Glen Theatre inc, both lynch mob cases of RRR tactical censorship of legal speech, in the region whose Appellate court competes with Texas for 2nd worst in the nation for civil rights protection. Raising kids in such regions is often more challenging than in less RRR infested regions, as they need to be trained in skills that recognize most neighbors and friends as pathological, while still being functionally socialized to deal with them. The easier course of indoctrinating kids to be like sick neighbors is overdue to be treated as serious child abuse, difficult to enforce on such a large scale.

Under core principles of US law, all mala prohibita, what are loosely called “victimless crimes”, are Constitutionally suspect as reflecting prejudices of some advocacy group to marginalize and deny rights to neighbors. That generally includes speech content censorship, drug laws, “nudity” laws (try to define “nudity” in a substantive, neutral manner), and sexuality based laws. A reversal of archaic Puritan/Calvinist bigotry in US laws and roots in Common Law would call for protecting au naturel persons on Main Street equally as those with funny hats, sideburns, or other costumes related to their religions, both for persons for who naturism unto itself is a religion or others for whom it’s an element of religious practice that harms none, and for those entitled to merely be free of oppressive laws based on other people’s dirty dogma. There’s no valid reason to oppress a passive state of being that doesn’t affect others via law, even if many immature people have personal issues where they need to grow the fuck up and deal with human diversity.

This includes the use of White House regime FCC process to harass and intimidate broadcasters, who for commercial reasons in catering to audiences full of intolerant bigots already tend to self-censor heavily. Courts have recently reversed some large FCC fines driven by rabid fundy organizations, ruling that RRR tactics to use the FCC to impose chilling prior restraint by broad brush means and using amorphous legalese definitions designed to be impossible to clearly understand is fundamentally not legal. The importance of broadcast censorship isn’t whether Janet Jackson has good taste in non-piercing nipple jewelry, or whether war is cruel (Private Ryan). This is a question of whether censorship is tolerated to marginalize and subordinate real people and their real lives, by public policy that declares their values and lifestyles squashed from visibility in order to favor dogma of hate cults.

American Family Association, Don Wildmon’s organization, and its members who’ve joined his campaigns to file FCC complaints about programs and FCC licensees in markets those filing the complaints could not possibly have personally viewed, deserve to be prosecuted for large numbers of felonies they’ve perpetrated in their censorship campaigns. In addition to various regulatory violations, filing a false complaint about alleged broadcast “indecency” as AFA in one case managed to instigate 17,000 individual complaints, is a Federal felony under 18 USC 1001. When most people filing via AFA could not possibly have watched the programs on the stations against which they filed, those AFA members’ and supporters’ actions were clearly felonies. Unfortunately, a non-GOP FCC Commissioner with whom I’ve discussed these issues in public on the hearing record and in the shadows is likely correct, that the FCC nor DOJ (Justice) will not do their duty and pursue criminal investigations of AFA false filings absent marching orders from Congress.

I’ve made many filings with the FCC over the years, and never had an application denied, while in the two cases where I’ve filed petitions to deny renewal of broadcast licenses, both licensees were driven out of the industry along with facing serious legal costs and FCC fines.

People need to have their rights to visibly and opening live lives without censoring public existence of themselves meaningfully protected, unless by personal choice and not coercion of illegal laws or abuse of legal process they opt to maintain greater privacy. Anything less means some people are subordinated to pretending to be what they’re not, over issues of core civil rights. That results in any and every supremacist hate cult and its members being criminal child abusers, and not operating within religious or parental rights, when they indoctrinate kids to have the kinds of disabling dysphoria or cognitive dissonance reactions it appears the friend and her parents of this OP had, while lacking skills to cope with not just witnessing the diversity of skyclad pagans and alternate sexualities in private homes, but front and center on Main Street and on broadcast TV. Anything less is unworkable if we’re to uphold core standards of equal protection of religious and other rights for all citizens.

TeaLibby: Sally Mann’s photos of her children can be purchased for use by some sick pedophile who likes to be titillated and aroused by the sight of a naked child. Be it porn or not. To think that some sick a–hole can purchase this picture, get all excited and then go snatch a child off the street and molest or abuse them is just plain wrong. It’s just plain sick.

And believe me, being a child advocate, some of the a–holes do exactly that. Whether it be her right to photograph and display her child’s naked body is one thing, but what happens when like I said, the pedophile is let loose on the streets with a hard on looking for a child to molest? Or if it’s a horny ass woman. Girls do it too. Some people just don’t think about what a photo like Sally Mann’s might do to any of our neighborhood children just trying to play outside.

Spam_I_Am: @TeaLibby: If prohibiting such images in any form is your idea of saving humanity, then I say why stop at that? The logical extension of that would be to just dress all our children up in full burkas since clearly the sight of them doing innocent children stuff in public is way too titillating to tolerate in a proper society.

Adieu_Mluv: Sick a-holes can also purchase pictures of clothed children and get off on them. They can also purchase fashion magazines. They could also just look outside and see plenty of children, titillatingly running around merely being alive. That’s sick. We should anesthetize all children and keep them locked up in boxes in our own homes for their own safety.

Tommy_Tripod: Why the hell would you want nude photos of your 10-year-old? Maybe an infant or toddler… but a 10-year-old? That’s pretty creepy. What 10-year-old would be ok with that anyway?

Grimly: Censorship is not an effective way to prevent the exploitation of children.

Pompadoor: “We should anesthetize all children and keep them locked up in boxes in our own homes for their own safety.”

Exactly! Finally somebody who agrees with me. Soon as the cuteness wears off babies should be put in boxes and fed government approved medication and media.

That’s right kids, enjoy your time, soon as I take my position as benevolent and all knowing dictator y’all be on Ritalin and Fox News 24/7.

TeaLibby:@Spam_I_Am – I’m not saying prohibit the images. I’m saying not putting them out there for sale or for the public taking. I know many people who have nude photos of their children but they’re not displayed as art for sale.

I also know that if a pedophile wants to molest a child that it would happen without looking at photos first and would perhaps do it if the child was dressed in a burka. But do you call naked children outside doing innocent children stuff? Not in this society.

When we reach a proper society (as you call it) then I suppose it won’t be so titillating anymore. But in the meantime, while we are in a not-so-proper-society, I still say protect the children by any means possible. This is all about protecting the children.

Those who don’t live in the “proper society” just yet. Don’t get me wrong on the issue of naturism or one being a nudist either. I go nude. But in the society that we live in now, going nude outside of the proper place is unacceptable because we still have crazies who get so turned on by the naked body that they become violent. Until the tables turn, we have to protect the children. If we don’t they may grow up to live in some psych ward living off yours and my tax dollars. It’s all about the children.

FromtheHip: We’d better prevent kids from playing sports since they’re far more likely to be hurt seriously doing so than to hook up with a real pedophile (as opposed to the fictitious everywhere boogeymen of lynch mobs).

We’d better ban kids from watching TV, since so many do so instead of sports they become seriously unhealthy. That, of course, is prolific, and a cause of considering many parents unfit. It’s no excuse that some homes are in bad neighborhoods where it’s unsafe to go outside when staying inside causes harm to minors.

If kids were raised as most nudist kids are raised, the kids would be less susceptible to pedophiles than those who are raised as costume-reliant kids not taught to deal seriously with real-world issues. Nudist raised kids usually have a healthier balance of athletic risks and benefits than many peers, as well. Costume-compulsive indoctrinated kids are developmentally stunted on average 10% compared to peers by mid-teens, clearly a form of child abuse to those who are NOT raised as nudists.

While we’re banning stuff to protect kids, better ban toilets and bathtubs, where kids drown. Better ban cars and doctors, both causes of many avoidable deaths, even if they serve other legitimate functions too. Better ban blunt objects and personal weapons too, since NCIC data (FBI compiled police reports) shows they’re the tools of most violent felonies and homicides, unlike firearms or knives which together are a minority of tools used in serious crimes.

BTW, “personal weapons” in DOJ-speak means human body parts, and to ban those dangerous weapons requires converting humans to headless quadriplegics. All to protect us, rather than deal with complex social problems, and avoid illegal prior restraint, or substitute it for developing mature humans?

Tommy_Tripod: The real pedophiles are the people you would never suspect. The soccer coach with a wife and kids of his own… the “youth pastor” at your local church… grandpa… uncle… all the nice good-looking people who you would never suspect until their faces are all over the news.

Action_Junkie: Aside from verbose name-calling against people who have different philosophies than he does in the name of societal change and cloaked behind the constitutional grounds of allowable actions, FromtheHip makes valid claims.

I simply disagree with him. After all, community standards generally dictate what is considered porn. If you do not like the standards in your community then go elsewhere.

It would be interesting to see a study of how many people interested in violence have large collections of violent materials, how many bigots have bigoted material, how many robbers actually know about robbery, and how many pedophiles have collections of naked children.

You can bust my balls all you want, but I don’t belong to a single organization you mentioned and I still think the laws to protect children should unequivocally take precedence over the right of grownups to do what they wish with their art.

Tommy_Tripod: I’m sick of hearing about how nudity is not sexual. Of course, it’s fucking sexual… you’re displaying your sex organs for everyone to see.

DrinkenDrive: No it’s sexual to you perhaps but not everyone. You associate being able to see someone’s genitals with sex but that’s your problem. You know they even have beaches where people go naked and they don’t suddenly start humping each other.

Valkyrie: Of course nudity isn’t always sexual. I’m nude (or at least naked) at the moment. If I’m in the privacy of my own home, on my own, in the summer I often don’t bother to put on clothes. It’s about comfort. There’s nothing inherently sexual about nudity, it’s a social convention.

Is it only sexual if there is an observer? Because I also did life modeling when I was at university (and occasionally afterward). I certainly didn’t find that sexual, and I doubt whether the artists did.

I was asked to pose nude for a photographer once, one who was doing a series of studies of large women. I did consider it, but decided not to, because I didn’t want to be identifiable for professional reasons (or rather, for social reasons).

Tommy_Tripod: I’ve been to nude beaches… I had to sit down the whole time. I have a hard enough time not getting aroused at regular beaches.

Spam_I_Am: Nudity is not sexual. The perception of the viewer is what makes it sexual.

Surely it is understandable why viewing genitals tends to be viewed sexually in many cultures, but that is mostly social indoctrination-related. In cultures or environments where public nudity is widespread, this connection is not made in the same way.

And BTW – technically the definition of “nude” is “unclothed”. Thus you could have a business suit on, thus not meeting that definition, but have holes cutout for the genitals. And what about the female chest/breasts? Those aren’t genitals. What about the male chest? What makes those sexual or not sexual depends on cultural perceptions.

I don’t have a problem with the general concept that Action_Junkie presented, the idea of the safety of children to some extent trumping adult freedoms. But the real question is what people think is necessary to assure “safety”, and what constitutes “harm.” I’ve asked people to define this in this discussion several times now and there have been precious few responses to that.

Liberty_Belle: Wut? Nudity is not always about sex. I personally think that was a good idea. Like someone said there are nude beaches. There are even nude ranches. Some people just feel more comfortable in their nude state. Shit, I feel more comfortable in my nude state. Especially now. It is so damn hot.

Tommy_Tripod: Nudity isn’t sexual? Ok, let’s take a woman and put her in front of a man. Now let’s strip her naked, and see if he looks at her the same way.

DrinkenDrive: And how is this hypothetical man supposed to now see this hypothetical nude woman?

Pompadoor: Nude beaches are great. I also get a lot of exercise running to the water every time a hot woman walks by. And every now and then I run into the water for no apparent reason just to mess with people’s minds.

“Nudity isn’t sexual? Ok, let’s take a woman and put her in front of a man. Now let’s strip her naked, and see if he looks at her the same way.”

This only proves there’s a difference between a naked and a clothed person. There are several native Indian tribes that walk around naked all day. The relationship between nudity and sex is purely cultural.. or those naked native Indian tribe females are butt ugly, cuz they ain’t giving me no hard-on.

Grimly: I have a problem with “by any means possible.” I have a problem with “should unequivocally take precedence.” It is a pain in the ass to question the means we take, and it’s a pain in the ass to equivocate, but this is the work that must be done, that cannot be shirked.

PEARL_NEKLESS: “If you do not like the standards in your community then go elsewhere.”

This comes in several forms and is a classic fail of an argument.

“Nudity is not sexual. The perception of the viewer is what makes it sexual.”

The problem comes for some when the images are of children below the local age of consent but who are entering or going through puberty and therefore are displaying physical characteristics that have evolved both to indicate the readiness for mating and elicit arousal in potential mates.

If these physical characteristics go on to induce arousal (as they have evolved to do) in a viewer of the pictures, does this mean the images should never be taken or displayed in the first place?

Action_Junkie: There is one solution to a problem in the United States. That solution is political. Pass a law or statute that changes the law.

What really irritates me is the people who are too lazy to help change the law. They instantly want to go to the judicial (court) system, because this circumvents the will of the people. When people have no say, then you might as well have a government run not by the people but by a select few who think they know better than everyone or almost everyone else. Sure, there are numerous things that need to be addressed and redressed in the law, but this is what the judicial branch is made for.

Community standards are in place because communities are, uh, different. What plays in San Diego might not play in San Antonio. If you want a homogeneous society in a large country, then you might as well vilify the western cowboys, the Cajuns, the Alaskan natives, the Maine woodsmen & women, the metropolitan New Yorkers, the prairie pioneers, et al.

Valkyrie: PEARL_NEKLESS’s question is a good one, “Is it wrong to be aroused at images of children (at, or even before, puberty)?

Is it the arousal itself that is wrong, or the acting on such arousal? Does accepting that people will be aroused by acts/object choices that are illegal mean that they are more likely to commit those acts?

That’s a difficult question. Should a pedophile who is aroused by images of children, but who never acts on that arousal, be criminalized? With current virtual imaging, it is perfectly possible to produce sexual images of children that involve no actual children (so no harm of individual children in the production). But would this encourage ‘normalization’ of the act of having sexual contact with those children? I don’t know. That’s a question that can be asked of all pornographic images.

People who support pornography in general often state that it can provide a sexual outlet for people and thus prevent rape. People who oppose pornography say that it actually encourages rape. Neither side has actually proved their case, from what I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot more than the average person on this subject).

Tommy_Tripod: Pornography isn’t much of an outlet… it only exacerbates the problem. If I’m single and horny, and I look at porn… it doesn’t solve the problem. It makes it worse. It just makes me want to go out and get laid.

DrinkenDrive: People who oppose pornography say that it actually encourages rape. Neither side has actually proved their case, from what I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot more than the average person on this subject).

From what I’ve read the availability of pornography is negatively correlated with violent sexual crime.

As for whether arousal by such images should be illegal – it pretty much already is at least in the UK. I think this is perilously close to thought crime.

Tommy_Tripod: If you’re referring to child porn, it’s illegal because it’s depicting child abuse. In order to produce these images, some child had to suffer. So in a sense, it’s not being aroused that’s necessarily the crime, but being in possession of something illegal.

DrinkenDrive: I’m referring to computer generated images.

Spam_I_Am: I guess it’s somehow fitting that Orwell was British, eh? England is also now the proud home to the highest number of public security cameras per-capita in the world these days if I recall correctly.

I will accept that pornography doesn’t help you with your personal sexual stresses. But please don’t try to extrapolate your single personal/anecdotal experience to the rest of humanity.

Val makes a good point about “thoughts” versus actions. It is my observation that we have long since criminalized “thoughts” in the USA, England and much of the west, when it comes to alleged pedophilia. Now you can get thrown in jail just for having images on your computer. In regards to her point about virtual imaging, I recall that in the USA people were trying to ban “child porn” based on these computer-generated images as well. I don’t remember if that was part of the “COPA” legislation or some other court case. I find such things bizarre to the extreme.

Valkyrie: Depends on how you define correlation. I know there were figures from Sweden suggesting rape figures went down with the freer availability with porn, but I think that there may be other factors at work, for example, attitudes to women in general, type of porn considered, etc.

The best psychological research comes up with is that men who already have a negative view of women will have it reinforced by watching porn, and men who have a positive view of women will not. So if you think all women are sluts and there for your own gratification (whether or not they want to be) then porn may make you act on that, and help you justify that view. If you think women are wonderful creatures, then porn won’t make you more likely to rape.

Spam_I_Am: There are also vast differences in how women or any other actors or acts are portrayed in pornography. Some purveyors can be relied-upon for consistently portraying women in a negative light, in subservient, demeaning roles, and others the opposite. You can’t just lump everything with nude people in it under one big giant “pornography” umbrella.

TeaLibby: @Action_Junkie: I have to agree with you. We have to protect the children. I must admit Sally Mann’s photo of her daughter is lovely because the child is beautiful. She shows a perfect innocence about her, but that’s what pedophiles like. That’s what turns them on more than seeing the naked child. As far as nudity being sexual, Oh my gosh, if you think that it is, there’s a lot you must learn about sex and your own sexuality. The naked body is a beautiful thing and I don’t think that it was created to be clothed. Lust takes over and makes nudity sexual to some.

Valkyrie: Let me state that I am in total opposition to the sexual (ab)use of children. But I also think that the ‘protection’ of children has gone too far. Many children are so overprotected because of the culture of fear that they miss out on the freedoms I had as a child. That’s sad. In many ways, kids are more at risk from the crap that’s on TV and in video games. TV stations are clearly pedophiles since they frequently sexualize pre-teen girls (I haven’t seen so much sexualization of boys).

I don’t think that there are necessarily more pedophiles around today than in the past, just that the issue is more talked-about. Sexual abuse in the family is not a new phenomenon either. Good sex education at an early (but appropriate ) age, and making it clear to kids that they do have the right to say no to adults when they feel uncomfortable about what the adult is doing is a far better plan, in my view, than wrapping them in cotton wool so that they can never learn to make judgments.

When I was 10 or 11 my mum had to work in London for the day, and left me to look around Westminster Abbey (I was an archeology geek even then). I was actually sexually assaulted in a minor way by some youngish foreign guy in the cloisters. There is clearly a limit to how seriously someone can be assaulted in a public place full of tourists, and the memory is pretty faint for me, but I think it included words I did not understand and some groping I felt uncomfortable with. I didn’t tell my mother, because I didn’t really know how to process it, we didn’t talk about sex in our household. If we had, I might have been able to discuss it with her. I think I was also afraid that my freedom would be curtailed because I knew it was wrong what happened to me.

Was it wrong for my mum to leave me like that? Many would consider it so these days, I guess. But a century ago, kids were working full-time in field and factory and contributing to the family economy. While it’s a good thing that they don’t have that responsibility (in the developed world, anyway) I sometimes think that the balance has gone too far in the other direction.

Tommy_Tripod: Wow, you were molested in Westminster Abbey? That’s one of my favorite spots on London… I’ll never look at it the same way again.

twistontheside: Nudity in no way equals pornography. In most jurisdictions, a nude image of a child is not considered child pornography unless the child is depicted in some sort of sex act.

Which is why I insist on remaining a Canadian citizen until more people pull their heads out of their asses and start thinking for themselves (including those in government).

TwinkleToes: The first point seems to be: has anyone consulted the child in question? (Parents who took the photos, police who confiscated them, people who comment on this thread?) It seems a nonsense to talk about “child protection” when everyone assumes they know better than the child what’s good for her (or him). Is nudity inherently sexual?

I would guess one reason, in a naturist household, for displaying naked photos is to teach the important lesson that the answer is emphatically “no”. I’ve seen plenty of women in clothes which are titillating and arousing. I’ve also been in plenty of naturist groups which are extraordinarily UNsexual, even when we hug and caress affectionately while naked. Intention is everything.

Is there not room for difference between households, without imposing uniform standards on all? In many families, naked photos of children are not on display, and children would be embarrassed if they were. In some families, the children are relaxed about having their nude photos on display. Why do we have to impose one group’s standards on everyone else?

Obviously, some level of protection for children is important. The question is, are children protected by being taught shame about their naked bodies? I would say not. I understand the principle of an age of consent (although I find it odd that in UK, where the age of sexual consent is 16, children as young as 10 can be convicted for murder, as capable of criminal intent and understanding.)

I think there is an important discussion to be had, however, about the principle of saying a child cannot give consent, and their interests are best protected by parents. Does this mean children cannot withhold consent either? So, what do they do when they meet a real abuser? (eg, a father who wants sex, and says “your no doesn’t count, because you’re a child, and I know what’s good for you?)

It seems to me, if one really wants to prevent child abuse, the first step is to teach children that they have the right, and the capacity, to choose to say yes or no to who touches them and how, and to how their body is displayed. And to make a huge fuss if their “no” around these matters is ignored. If I genuinely believed my 10-year-old could not give or withhold consent about a photo of them I had on display (clothed or otherwise), I would think I had done a poor job of protecting them from any potential abuser.

As it happens, I have known a case of a family who had a photo of their naked daughter (aged about 8) on display just inside their front door. I knew the family quite well, their 2 daughters were good friends with my daughter, and I had no reason to believe the girl in question was upset, or incapable of complaining if she was.

Adieu_Mluv: Ok, let’s take a woman and put her in front of a man. Now let’s strip her naked, and see if he looks at her the same way.

Pity all the poor gynecologists having to stare at and probe women’s sexual organs all day. They must be ever so frustrated. Let’s not forget that one of the visible components (on a nude man) also doubles as an excretory organ. Ewwwww!

***

And that’s about all we have time for tonight. What an interesting debate and it’s a shame we have to leave it but even though the broadcast has ended that doesn’t mean the conversation has to stop.

Please feel free to leave your comments below and if you’ve found this interesting, don’t forget to click “Subscribe,” hit the “Bell” icon for notification so you don’t miss our next broadcast and if you’re so inclined, visit our Patreon account and consider making a donation so that we can continue creating interest content.

This is me, Kari R. Wade, thanking you and wishing you nothing but the best from the bottom of my heart, Good Night!

In the midst of a tantrum burst of emotions, Robson stomped into his room and slammed the door shut so hard the picture on the wall to the right came free of its hook and crashed to the floor. It was one of his favorites, a print of a painting depicting a young boy and girl building a snowman with the caption “Snowmen fall from heaven…unassembled” across the bottom. The glass and the frame were cracked and now it was ruined just like everything else in his life! He kicked over his wastebasket, the plastic one with Captain America and all the other Marvel’s Avengers on it and discarded candy wrappers and other bits of broken junk he no longer had a use for skittered across the floor which only made him angrier.

He threw his head back and screamed, “Why can’t you give me
what I want? Why can’t I eat what I want to eat and watch what I want to watch
on tv? I’m sick of this stupid house and I hate you both! I can’t wait until I
get older and leave here forever!”

And the rage kept spilling out until he had expelled all the
air from his lungs and the rant became a coughing fit, but he didn’t care. He
pulled in a deep breath of new air and let out a frustrated and sustained, guttural
bellow so loud it vibrated his eyeballs.

When the red mist of fury lifted from his vision and he was left with nothing more than the fatigue of ages pressing down upon him, he heard a soft rap on his door. He had no desire to respond, so he didn’t but the door handle turned slowly and his father pushed his head inside.

“Got it all out of your system?” his father asked with no trace of anything being out of the ordinary.

Robson didn’t answer, he couldn’t answer, the fatigue wouldn’t
allow it. But as his father entered the room and surveyed the damage, the young
boy stood firm, and let his breath out through his nostrils in a defiant hiss.

His father picked up the cracked picture frame and examined
it as he walked past Robson to sit on the bed. He patted the full-size mattress,
indicating for his son to have a seat but the boy didn’t move. “Come on, it’s
not going to kill you to sit next to me. I just need you to listen to what I
have to say and then I’ll leave you alone to continue being mad at us.”

Reluctantly, Robson dragged his feet as if the gravity in
the room had suddenly increased and plopped onto the bed as far away from his
father as he could manage.

“A shame about this picture,” his father said. “Your mother and I bought this for you because it was the first thing you actually asked for. You pleaded with us and made your case so succinctly that we had no choice. At the time, we didn’t have the funds to spare but sometimes the happiness of the people you love is worth more than money.

“The reason I’m bringing this up is to talk to you about
sacrifices. You’re too young to fully understand this but everybody in the world
has to make them, no matter how young or old they are. And you may think the things
we ask or tell you to do is unfair but that’s only because you don’t see the
bigger picture and there’s no real reason you should at your age. Our job as
your parents is to take care of the big important stuff so that you can live
the easiest life we can manage to give you. But it’s also our duty to prepare
you for what’s to come and we planned to wait until you were a little older but
since you’re so eager to grow up, let me tell you what life holds in store for
you.

“As you get older, you’re going to learn that even the people who were never supposed to let you down probably will and someone who has the same opinion about you…you will let them down, as well. That includes the three of us, champ. We’re eventually going to let each other down.

“You’re going to fall in love one day and your heart will get broken and it will probably happen more than once and it will get harder to love with each passing break. And most likely you’ll break a few hearts yourself even if you remember how it felt when yours was broken and try to avoid doing it to someone else, it’s going to happen.

“Despite your best intentions, you’ll fight with your best friends, blame a new love for things an old one did, complain because time is passing too fast, wish you had your childhood to do over again to get things right, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love which includes me and your mother.”

Robson sat motionless, staring at the cracked glass and
broken frame, unable to meet his father’s gaze because he felt the sting of
tears in his own eyes. “What do I do?” he said in a small voice.

“What do you mean?”

“To stop all the bad things from happening. What do I do?”

“Well, you can start by not taking the good things and times for granted but do take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt…because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back. But before any of that, you should go apologize to your mother, she was really upset by some of the things you said.”

Robson hopped off the bed, turned his back to his father and
wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He walked to the door with
a purpose but stopped at the door jamb and said over his shoulder, “I don’t
really hate you, you know.”

“I know, kiddo,” his father smiled. “Now, go give your
mother a great big hug and kiss and shag your butt back in here so we can straighten
this room up.”

The little boy took off like a shot out of the room yelling,
“Mommy! Mommy! I’m sorry!”

His father stood up, righted the wastebasket and carefully tilted the broken glass into the little plastic bucket. He caught sight of the caption on the picture and thought, Snowmen aren’t the only things that require assembly, sometimes family bonds do too.

She had the nerve to ask me, “Just who do you think you are?” and my temper spiked. Zero to sixty, I got hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hell, and I was fixing to tell her just who I thought I was.

I was going to tell her I’m the person she wants to have near when she’s dying, and whom she likes to be with while she’s alive. The certain someone she can spontaneously turn to for help when she’s in trouble, and who’s the first to hear the good news when she has good fortune.

The guy whose counsel she seeks when she’s perplexed and my congratulations when the perplexity is solved. The person in whom she can confide the secrets she wants no other living soul to know, and yet will never pry into her heart to discover whether there are any more secrets to be revealed.

The pillar on which she can lean when her heart aches, but who will never complain or take advantage of her leaning. Someone who will get down on my knees beside her when she’s down, and forget that I did so when she’s on her feet again.

The shoulder she can weep on when she’s sad and with whom she enjoys laughing when she’s glad. Always there with a tear on my cheek when she suffers and a twinkle in my eye when the sun shines on her again. Also, I’m the one with pain in my voice when she’s in distress and melody in my tone when her heart is happy.

Besides her family, I’m the one who admires her for her strong points and loves her in spite of her weak ones. I can laugh at her foibles without despising her for having them as well as make allowances for her limitations without allowing them to obscure her talents.

I’m that fella who’s proud of her when fortune favors her but not ashamed of her when she fails. I will contribute to her success without claiming any share in it. I feel and show satisfaction when she pleases me but never resentment when she disappoints me.

The stand-up guy that tells her the truth even when it hurts and without her taking offense. And yes, I am not ashamed to grant her a favor even at the risk of being imposed upon and can extend a helping hand to lighten her load without expecting any other reward than having had the privilege of so doing.

I give all I can whenever I can without ever keeping a record of what I have given and who says the best about her when everybody else is saying the worst.

I want to say all this and make her feel it, make her understand, but the anger passes and all I say is, “I am your friend,” and it’s all that’s needed to be said because it encompasses everything.

I watched him discreetly to see how he adjusted and was surprised at just how easily he accepted change. Don’t get me wrong, things were awkward at first.

Normally a surefooted man, he began stumbling into things and tripping constantly. Somehow, the growth of the additional eye must have thrown off his depth perception. This only lasted a few days, though. In no time at all, he returned to his usual graceful self, more so in fact. In recent times, I couldn’t recall him having a single episode of clumsiness.

His innate ability to adapt was a huge advantage and the more comfortable he became with his condition, perhaps the more likely he would finally feel comfortable to confide in me. I knew this wouldn’t happen any time soon because he was preoccupied with the advantages and shortcomings of his newly altered state.

Besides the obviously improved eyesight, his reading skill and speed increased one hundredfold. Magazines that he initially glanced through, the ones instantly bundled for the recycled trash day, he started tearing through, reading them cover to cover no matter what they were–Omni, Scientific American, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan.

Once he conquered magazines, he moved on to books. At first, my little trashy paperbacks and dime novels, but then he moved onto more serious fiction. One time he even polished off Moby Dick and War and Peace in the same night. Many was the night that I tossed and turned to the sound of him in the den flipping through the pages of some book or other at a breakneck pace.

As fate would have it, just when I was beginning to adjust to his third eye, I discovered that his nose had changed. Nothing drastic, just a slight flaring of the nostrils. With this minute alteration came a sensitive sense of smell. Now I thought he’d have no choice but to talk with me about it, but he didn’t, he just became reclusive. It was obvious to me that this was just the beginning—of what? I had no idea. Concerned at this point, I began dropping hints. Asking how he was feeling. If he had an allergy or a head cold. When was the last time he had his eyes checked, surely reading for long periods under that dim reading lamp couldn’t be easy on the eyes.

He began to become irritated with my prying, so I stopped, convincing myself if he could live with the changes then so could I and maybe that would have been true if it stopped at his nose.

His ears were next. First the right and then a week later, the left. Sprouting upward to a point. The result was enhanced hearing. Accompanied by migraine headaches from sounds that even our dog couldn’t pick up.

Then his mouth. Bleeding gums that resulted from a second row of teeth that pushed their way to the surface over his original set. Tongue followed a short time later. Elongating. Forking.

After that, I couldn’t tell you what was next. I never saw him again. Not that he moved or I left him. He just kept himself forever on the other side of a locked door. Part of me was thankful. I was spared the sight of the monster he was becoming. And he was spared the look of revulsion that I could no longer hide. That didn’t curb my curiosity, however. I still peeked through keyholes and drilled tiny holes in the wall. Why? He was changing into a wholly new person and I had to see what the end result was. After all, he was the man I married.

On the few occasions when he caught me spying, he flew into a rage, demanding to know what my problem was. My problem? Like I was the one who looked like an inhabitant from the Island of Dr. Moreau.

And that’s all I know. Whatever loyalty I felt towards him, whatever love I had for him, was gone. Gone the moment I got a clear look at what he’d become and witnessed his potential for violence. I was probably an idiot for remaining as long as I did, but then, love blinds sometimes. All that was gone now. The very next morning I packed a change of clothes in a rucksack, emptied the bank account, gassed up the car and left. Without a backward glance.

And I avoided mirrors, afraid that I had contracted whenever disease afflicted my husband, terrified of looking into the face of my own change.

“Where have all the living people disappeared to?” Sally asks and I’m not quite sure whether she’s addressing the question to me or merely ruminating out loud as she is sometimes known to do. “I mean the real-life people, not the walking dead with their heads buried in electronics that fight to live in overcrowded cities only to isolate themselves in public and form fake surface relationships on the internet.”

I make the assumption she is talking to me and I’m about to reply, but either I’m wrong in thinking the conversation included me or I took too long to speak up, because she continues, “I am so tired of dealing with avatars,” this is the name Sally applies to all sentient lifeforms capable of effectively communicating with her who ignore her for text messages and Instagram videos. “There must have been some shift in the social axis that I wasn’t made aware of that suddenly made every avatar I encounter uber unfriendly, discourteous and unkind. It’s like I’ve suddenly become a stranger to my neighbors, the city—hell, the whole goddamned societal globe. How is a person supposed to exist today without someone, anyone, offering up a bit of emotional support or maybe even just a helping hand? Am I the insane one here?”

I don’t answer, chiefly because my truth and her truth are rarely in alignment and I have no desire to hurt her feelings or open up a can of worms. I decide it’s a safer bet all around to allow her to vent her frustrations.

“And now everyone tosses the term friend around so haphazardly,” Sally gestures broadly into the open air as if delivering a sermon to an unseen congregation. “Slapping it onto a multitude of undeserving random strangers so that the original meaning of being someone that shares trust, confidence, and support, despite the odds and no matter the situation. And if an expert were to examine current day friendships, they would find that the relationships only last as long the favors derived from the friendship continue to exist.”

“You’re not talking to me, either. This is the verbal equivalent of a thread rant and I’m not saying that I don’t understand how you feel and agree with what you’re saying in part but I’d like to address this topic in a broader sense, if I may?”

And I explain to her that one of my pet peeves with social media profiles and posts is the rampant negativity that prevails. After touting how happy, friendly, down to earth they are, individuals will proceed to run off a list of don’ts and other things that they absolutely positively will not stand for.

“But why not simply concentrate on the positive? And that includes you,” I pause to gauge her reaction. Her face is expressionless, perhaps I should stop but to be honest I want her to hear what I have to say, so I press on.

“As overused as the Gandhi quote is, why not try to Be the change you want to see in the world? Which means, perhaps instead of expecting people to immediately conform to your desired way of being—”

“Desired?”

“Yes, desired. Are you really being the type of person to the avatars that you want them to be to you? Why not pay it forward and set the example by walking the walk in addition to talking the talk? You want people to wave Hi to you on the street? Try waving first.”

“So, the responsibility rests solely on my shoulders?”

“Do I even have to answer that, Sally? If you want the people within your sphere of influence to treat you differently, who better than you to take on the responsibility?”

Sally opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again but says nothing, obviously attempting to formulate her response. In the silence, I continue.

“What if all the avatars you pass every day, the ones who somehow seem familiar for no apparent reason, the ones who brush past you without so much as an Excuse me, were all meant to cross your path for a reason?

“What if a soulmate—yes, I believe you can have more than one—someone who held a message for your life and possible insights into your future, was lost because you were too deeply into your righteous indignation to catch their gaze?

“Or better yet, what if every bump was meant to be a chance for an avatar to share something they know that might help you on your path, or maybe even better still, you happen to be one of those people holding onto a piece of their life that needs to be let go or needs to be passed on like a story you need to share?

“Think about it, haven’t you ever come across people in your life you think will be there forever, and then they just fade away? Moving onto their own journeys, their own paths only to find them in your life again, stronger and more beautiful?

“And speaking of beautiful, this is a crazy, beautiful world, but you only get to see how wonderful it all is if you take chances. Don’t let opportunities pass you by. You do you, live your life and stay angry and vigilant if you’re comfortable with that but pay attention to the signs that maybe there are messages out there for you. Maybe there are people you need to meet, souls that can add to your journey through life. Souls to help you grow, souls to make you cry. Adding strength to your life and your soul. Just maybe for everything, there is a reason.”

“And you accused me of going on a rant? What the hell was that and where did it come from? That’s the most you’ve said to me in the two years I’ve known you,” Sally says, raising one eyebrow, then lowered them both suspiciously. “Wait a minute. You mean you, don’t you? You think you’re the person that’s meant to be my soulmate?”

I can feel the blush rising from my collar, up my neck and enveloping my face and I am powerless to stop it.

“Is that such a crazy idea?” I ask in a voice that cracks like I’ve regressed to puberty.

“I-I don’t know,” Sally shakes her head like she’s trying to shift the idea into place. “This is all so left field. Maybe we can discuss it over a cup of coffee?”

I pull my phone out of my belt clip, unlock it and begin scrolling, “Um, okay, friend, but just let me check my messages to see if I missed an important text or something.”

Sally’s face flushes with anger but before she can rage at me, I throw my hands up in surrender.

We hated each other from the moment we met. No logical reason, just something at our mitochondrial levels, some cellular vibration or preternatural instinct caused a repulsion between us instead of attraction.

But a cool current ran beneath our fiery surface feud, a sameness we hadn’t discovered until we accidentally had a civil conversation and I realized just how interesting she was. She must have felt something similar because during the conversation she made me promise that I would not sleep with her under any condition. The request caught me off guard coming out of left field like that but, to be honest, the thought had not crossed my mind, so I agreed without a second thought.

The following day we were back to normal but every once in a while we shared a pleasant conversational moment. When the holiday season finally rolled around, a bizarre set of circumstances led us to being alone in her home. She had been drinking but was far from drunk and I supposed it allowed her to feel a little more at ease with me so we talked and talked and talked and talked. It had been a long time since I held a woman’s company in conversation alone until the break of dawn.

She mentioned she was getting tired and I took that as my cue to leave… when she stopped me. Producing a crochet blanket from behind her leather couch, she told me how comfortable it was and how she had fallen asleep on it many times. Then she laid down on the couch to demonstrate and invited me to come see for myself.

So I did.

I slid behind her, the big spoon to her little one, with the scent of her perfume, shampoo and even the liquor mixing in my nose and making my heart race. I held her and we talked, soft, slow and sweet. The opportunity was there and if I said I was not tempted in the least, I would be bald-faced lying. But to this woman who was in so many ways out of my league, this woman who whispered “I love that way your mind works,” I had given my word and I kept it and I have kicked myself every day since.

I refuse to admit I love her. Chiefly because I don’t, or at least not in a way I’d like to. Not in a healthy way. I am infatuated with her, but it is different from any infatuation I’ve ever felt to date. I see her everywhere and in nearly anyone who comes close to her hair coloring and body type. To be clear, I do not fantasize about her nor can I picture a future in which we share a life, but I cannot get her out of my mind. I know exactly where she is but I will not contact her. On the rare occasions that she contacts me, I sometimes do not respond. I do not know why I do this.

Her last text message read:

Are you ghosting me? Something I said? Whatever the deal is, when you know what you want, contact me.

I will never tell her what I truly want because she cannot give it to me. I do not desire her, but I do miss her. No, not really. Not in that way. I want her attention and possibly her affection but not all the time. I guess all I really want is the ability to travel back in time and relive that special one-of-a-kind night when all the pieces fell into place…

This is not a test. This is a message from the Emergency Broadcast System. If you’re able to hear this message, I suggest you grab yourself a big glass of water and strap yourself down because this is going to be one tough pill to swallow.

The President of the United States of America is dead, as are all the other officers in the line of succession through to Secretary of Homeland Security, which leaves me. Who am I? You will have to wait a while to find that out, I’m afraid. I will not reveal my identity until I have a better understanding of the threat aimed at those who seat themselves in the Oval Office, but I wish to offer the following statement:

There’s no point in being polite about this so from this point on I’m going to speak to you plainly, truthfully, from my heart, so you’ll pardon my French as I do so.

For those of you oblivious nescients with your heads shoved up your own or someone else’s fourth point of contact, which is apparently more than half the population, we have been royally screwed by the so-called friendly visitors from the distant star, Prolexecor.

I have been pouring through complaints and pleas for help from people literally being fucked out of house and home by these little grey assclowns. If you’re listening to this right now and saying to yourself, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about, I have several friends who have adopted greys and they seem to be fitting in just fine”—I have a request to make: why don’t you blow out all the pilot lights, crank the knobs all the way up and stick your head in the oven so that I don’t have to hunt you down and do it myself.

I couldn’t give a rat’s ass, nor does the planet Earth give a rat’s ass about how much you love sucking off greys. You have five native racial classifications to suck and fuck on the planet and the greys are not, I fucking repeat,not among them. This message is about fostering relationships with humans, and that’s not even remotely possible if you’re going to throw sex at lifeforms that are not our genetic matchup.

Newsflash to the stupid asshats in our society: Greys don’t like fucking humans. Oh, wait, double newsflash: Greys don’t like fucking humans, they like fucking humans over. And they like doing it because we make it so ridiculously easy for them. Do you know why we haven’t been visited by any other alien races beside the Prolexecorians? Because they sent a message out to the rest of the known goddamned universe. Do you really need me to spell out what it said? It said that we Earthlings fucking suck as a species.

Did you get that? I’m talking to all the little dumbshits that openly brag about their xeno-coital exploits with creatures that cannot continue our line, in front of lonely, single humans who can. Are you people seriously mentally deficient? That’s not a rhetorical question, I actually want you to tweet the Oval Office to advise me if you’re mind-numbingly thick so I can make sure you’re on the passenger list for the next one-way shuttle off the fucking planet.

Think about it: if a family member announced to you that they wanted to get into an intimate relationship with the neighbor’s pet, would you be happy? Would you? No, you wouldn’t, so why the fuck would you let them do it with something that bears no resemblance to humans and produces no offspring? And brag about it?

First of all, you shouldn’t be shtupping the first visitors to touch down on our planet in since forever because it’s bad form and it gives not just you but the entire fucking planet a shitty reputation. Secondly, you shouldn’t be doing it bareback. I don’t give a fuck if your grey flashes some intergalactic medical card that states he/she/it is disease free. You don’t do it. You. Don’t. Do. It. And you especially do-fucking-not convince other humans to do it either. Disease-free for them may not be disease free for you.

And before you open your bassackward smegma eating piehole to try to justify your actions, saying something like, “I’ve been having sex with humans of all races for most of my life, doesn’t that count for something?” No, you obtuse fetal knuckle dragger, it fucking doesn’t. Do you wanna know why? It doesn’t count because you’ve turned your back on the human race and now you’re crawling with alien cooties. You’re a walking fucking human roach motel. Congratulations.

I’ve also come across stupid shitty websites devoted to technical virgins. You think it’s cool to lose your virginity to a grey and boast about still being a human virgin? It is not fucking cool. I’ve also seen Tumblr pages for humans that have sworn off humans. Humans. That. Have. Sworn. Off. Other. Humans. How simpleminded is that?

I don’t give a shit about fads and exotic tastes and getting your Kirk on, you were born a human so you leave the dance with the species who brought you. One of your own kind, stick to your own kind. And when I say fuck the greys, it doesn’t mean you actually get to go out and fuck the greys. Why? Is the concept of an alien invasion new to you? Are you really that blind? Or are you just so fucking clueless about the different ways a foreign invader can infiltrate our homeworld and take over? Well, it’s time someone told you that the grey you’re hot-monkey-loving, the selfsame one who couldn’t give two shits in a rucksack about you or your bland ass sexual prowess, that mother fucking non-terran cocksucker is only putting up with your horseshit to worm its way into your bank account and property. Every time you donate to their cause, every time you put them in your will or sign over your patch on land to one of them, we lose that much more of our planet. Our. Own. Fucking. Planet. And I swear to God I will personally groin punt the next person I discover doing something asinine like that, and I don’t give a fuck how young or old you are, I will fucking assault you.

Does this message make you feel like a shitbird? Good. If any of the grievances mentioned in this broadcast applies to you in any way, no matter how small, or even if you haven’t acted on your feelings yet but this shit is simmering in the back of your mind, this following message is for you:

Get the fuck off my planet.

I’m not kidding. Just leave. Seriously. If you’ve committed any act that possibly endangers the future survival and continuation of the human race and our birthright claim to this planet, be you rich, powerful, beautiful, healthy, or however genetically perfect… you need to find a new home. I would rather live on a world of loyal human misfits than share a planet with perfects who don’t care to preserve what we’ve built and fail to see just how important we are.

And when you rocket your treacherous asses off the planet, just know that I pity you because I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far in life, but I’m quite sure you won’t go any farther. Oh, and one more thing:

I tested the ripeness of Mr. Skelly’s soul more than thirty times this evening, all at the insistence of his wife, Tamara, who never left my side for an instant. I tried to explain to her that this was a delicate process that could not be rushed, but my words never reached her, as if her ears were made of cloth. Mr. Skelly’s ash gray body was laid out on the dining room table like a flesh centerpiece, table decorated with the finest cloth and place settings that she could afford.

This wasn’t uncommon. Most people were ignorant of the proper protocol in manners for a matter such as this. They would set out red wine and wafers, or specially baked bread and cakes, and some even brewed their own ales. Those trappings weren’t necessary, born mostly of superstition and old wives’ tales, but had they been presented, I would have tasted the offering. If for no other reason than to be polite.

Her husband had come to see me some six months earlier. He was skeptical, as most people are when seeking my services, but I never believed in hard selling my skills. It was a matter of faith. Either you believed that I could do what I claimed I could do, or you didn’t. In the end, Mr. Steven Skelly did believe. He revealed to me he had Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia and wasn’t expected to survive the year. And the diagnosis proved to be accurate.

When I first arrived at her door, Tamara debated whether or not to let me in. Not with me. She debated with herself. A loud conversation, as if both halves of her brain, the logical and the emotional sides, succeeded in separating themselves from one another and exercised shared control over the body. A conversation only the bereaved could have had and still seemed sane.

This was nothing new to me, in fact, Tamara’s discourse with herself counted amongst the tamer exchanges I had been witness to over the past ten years. I remained silent, taking no side in the argument, and was prepared to comply with her decision, either way. If she declined my services, I would have quietly tipped my hat and walked away.

When she quieted down, we stood there, me on her porch, unmoving, and she wedged in between the narrow crack of her door, unspeaking. Then, she shifted aside slightly, which I took as an invitation to enter, and squeezed past her as politely as I could manage in the limited space provided.

As I stated earlier, Mr. Skelly was laid out on the table in the dining room, dressed in his Sunday best, a Bible laid on his chest with his hands folded upon it.

“Mrs. Skelly, I wish you hadn’t gone through all this trouble—”

“Tamara, please, and it was no trouble at all,” she smiled kindly as she touched her dead husband’s face.

“No, what I mean is, we’ll have to remove your husband’s clothes. I can’t perform my job this way.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I thought—”

“It’s all right, you didn’t know. How could you know?”

Mr. Skelly was a tall man, a sturdy man, and even cancer couldn’t rob him of that, but it made his dead weight all the more difficult to manage. How Tamara succeeded in dressing him all by herself in the first place was remarkable. Where there’s a will, I suppose. In silence and in tandem, we stripped the corpse, being as respectful to the man who was no longer with us as we could have managed.

“How long?” Tamara asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How long will it take for you to do your…thing?”

“There isn’t a set timeframe for this sort of thing, Tamara,” I took one of her hands in mine, and she let me.

“Most people believe that life and the soul are one and the same thing. This simply isn’t the case. Life ends when the human body shuts down completely. The soul is eternal. The soul doesn’t power the body. If that were the case, we’d all live forever.”

Tamara looked at her husband, hopeful. “So, you mean Steven’s soul is still here, with us?”

“His soul hasn’t released itself from the flesh yet, so yes, in some way, it is still with us.”

Tamara pulled her hand free of my grasp and rushed over to the table and caressed Steven’s face gently. “Honey? Steven? Are you still in there? Can you hear me? Give me a sign if you can hear me!”

I moved behind Tamara, placed my hands on her shoulders and whispered into her ear, “It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t.”

She turned on her heels and was in my face suddenly, like an attack dog. Delicate hands balled into fists and pounding on my chest. “Then why are you just standing here? Why aren’t you doing what we paid you to do? Why aren’t you helping my Steven? I can’t bear to think of him trapped in there like that, helpless!”

Her energy spent, she folded herself into my chest and I held her.

“He isn’t trapped, Tamara. He’s in a transitional stage, like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. If you can imagine a spiritual chrysalis, enveloping his soul, molding and shaping his essence into what it needs to become in order to move on, that’s what’s happening now.”

Tamara looked up at me, concerned. “Then shouldn’t you be getting to work now? Before it’s too late?”

“His soul isn’t ready.”

“But how do you know?”

I couldn’t stifle a slight chuckle. “I’ve been doing this for over ten years now. I just know.”

“And you’ve never been wrong? Never made a mistake? Not once?” Her concern was understandable but unjustified.

“Not once. When his soul is ready, when it reaches the stage just before it emerges in its new form, I’ll do what I’ve been paid to do.”

“You’ll eat his sin?” That question was the one thing that never varied in deliverance, from person to person, job to job, regardless of who said it. It always came out sounding the same. Part skepticism, part hope.

“Every drop of it.”

“And there’ll be no retribution?” she looked up at the ceiling but I understood her meaning.

“No retribution. He’ll move on to a better place and none of his sins will transfer to you.”

“And what about you? You take this all of this on yourself. What happens to you?”

“With all due respect, that’s none of your concern,” I expected an argument. None came.

“Well then,” Tamara straightened up and composed herself. “Can I interest you in a cup of tea?”

“Tea would be nice.”

She stared at me a long moment, no doubt trying to decipher what made me do what I did. Trying to puzzle out how I came into this profession. But she never asked. I think she knew I wouldn’t be very forthcoming anyway, so she simply shook her head slightly and moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Darryl paced the length of the gravel path that divided the perfectly clipped lawn and stared at the bluestone pebbles that reflected the early morning light. He clenched an artist’s portfolio in a white-knuckled death grip, constantly checking his watch as he shot an occasional glance at the front door of the private house. He was clearly anxious about knocking on the door, but in truth was more nervous because he wasn’t sure of the makeup of the neighborhood or how he would be perceived, a young black man loitering on someone’s property.

He stopped and looked fixedly at the door. One deep breath to gird his loins. “Bump this.” He stepped up and wiped his sweaty palm on his pant leg before ringing the doorbell. An action, he discovered, that once began, could not be stopped. He worked the doorbell like a telegraph key — three short, followed by one long. “C’mon, c’mon, ‘fore I lose my nerve.”

***

The walls of Mark Brown’s bedroom were decorated with posters of comic book characters, and special collector’s edition comic books and rare comic art hung in ornate frames. Bookcases, a chest of drawers and anything else that provided a flat surface were littered with statues, model kits, action figures, toys, and piles of comic books and graphic novels. The room could have easily belonged to that of a young boy instead of a black man in his thirties.

Mark nearly leaped out of bed at the sound of the doorbell—more the pattern of the ring than the sound itself. Three short rings followed by a long one. Over and over again. He blindly reached for the alarm clock on the nightstand, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and checked the time.

“Who the hell’s ringing my bell like they lost their goddamned mind this early in the morning?”

The doorbell chime continued as Mark stumbled to the front door in his pajamas, still wiping sleep from his field of vision. “All right! All right! I hear you!” Mark violently swung the door open. “What? And it better be good!”

“Uh—what’s crackin’, I–I mean good morning, sir. Sorry to bother you ’cause you look like you were sleepin’, but I’m lookin’ for a Mr. Mark Brown. He still live here?” Darryl stammered.

“Don’t you people keep in contact with each other? I’ve never bought a Watchtower from any of you, and I’m not going to start today, get me?”

“I ain’t no Jehovah’s Witness, sir. It’s a portfolio, not a briefcase.” Darryl held up his portfolio.

“Then who are you?”

“My name’s Darryl. Darryl Jackson.”

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“’Pends on who you are.”

“I’m Mark Brown. What do you want?”

“The same Mark Brown who owns and publishes the Perceived Onslaught comic books?”

“The same Mark Brown you pissed off for getting him out of bed on his day off!”

“Mr. Brown, I said I was sorry ’bout that, but check it, I got here earlier than I thought I would and I tried to wait until a decent hour to show a brotha respect, but I’m kinda anxious, yanno? Slow, ya blow, snooze, ya lose.”

“What. Do. You. Want?” Mark said through gritted teeth.

“Uh — I was—I was kinda wonderin’ if —uh— you would—like—take a look at my submission samples? If it’s not too much trouble, an’ all?” Darryl said, visibly flustered.

“Well, it is too much trouble, and besides, all samples go through the submissions editor at my business address, so why don’t you drop them off there and I promise someone will take a look at them and get back to you.”

“Yo, but I tried that already, Mr. Brown, an’ all I keep gettin’ are form letters an’ stuff, tellin’ me to practice and submit again in a few months! What’s up with that?”

“What’s up with what?”

“What’s up with your submission editor? No offense, but I don’t think they know they butt from a t-square! I think they stoppin’ a lot of good work from reachin’ you, includin’ my stuff!”

“Look, Darren—”

“Darryl! Why you playin’ me?”

“—Darryl, my staff are dedicated professionals trained to spot talent and hire them if they’re at a professional level, and to nurture them if they’re not—”

“Yeah, yeah, I read all that in them interviews you be doin’, but I’m askin’ you to give me a chance! You run the company, don’t you? Can’t nobody veto your word, am I right?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what, I’ll call the office and tell them to expect you. Instead of a form letter, someone will personally sit down with you and go over your submission.”

“No!”

“No?”

“No disrespect, but I don’t wanna deal with no flunky. I came to meet with you.”

“Then you should have made an appointment. Look at me. I’m standing here in my pajamas. I don’t do meetings in my pajamas. Maybe some other time, huh? At my office?”

“I tried that, too! I left you a hundred messages, but you never returned any of my calls! All that paper you got, you can’t get a beeper or nothin’? Page a brotha back or somethin’, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Hey, Darryl, no need to get upset, okay? Sorry, if I didn’t return your calls. It’s nothing personal. I just get so many messages on a daily basis that it’s impossible to call everybody back.”

“Yo, I didn’t mean to flare up at you, Mr. Brown, it’s just I took the day off from work and travelled here all the way from Ithaca for you to take a look at my art—”

“Speaking of which, how did you get this address?”

“From one of your old comics from like seven or eight years ago, when you used to publish outta your house, before you blew up an’ got that corporate office in the city. See?? I been readin’ your joints from way back, Mr. Brown. Why don’t you hook a brotha up with a portfolio review? Make up for them unreturned messages, know what I’m sayin’?” Darryl could tell by Mark’s expression that he wasn’t biting. “Awww, c’mon! Don’t sleep on me! My game is tight! Lemme show you a little somethin’, somethin’, an’ if you ain’t feelin’ my art, I’ll bounce. Simple as that. That’s my word.”

Mark sighed and sized Darryl up. “A quick review, then you leave and let me get back to sleep, deal?”

“Bet!”

Mark ushered Darryl in through the foyer into the living room and gestured for the young man to take a seat at the table, while he stepped into the kitchen.

Darryl was momentarily stunned by all the comic book related paraphernalia that adorned the place. “Yo, this crib is phat. I’ma get me one just like it, but bigga! Yup.”

He moved to the framed comic book art pages that lined the walls and inspected them with childlike exuberance. “Man, I remember all these joints! Yo, hang on to these, Mr. Brown, cause they’re gonna be like priceless collector’s items or somethin’.”

“You can call me Mark. Every time you say Mr. Brown, I turn around and look for my father.” Mark called from the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Juice?”

“Second, you say I’m the next anybody and this review’s over quick-fast-in-a-hurry.”

“Why?” Darryl asked.

“Because two-thirds of the submissions we receive come with a cover letter that contains the sentence, You won’t regret hiring me because I’m the next— fill in the artist of your choice. Those submissions usually turn out to be the most amateurish, done by people who try to imitate their favorite artists. Submission editors aren’t impressed by the statement, so do yourself a favor and avoid getting lumped into that wannabe category. Strive to be yourself, not a carbon copy of someone else.”

“Good lookin’ out.”

“Mark disappeared back into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards, which were just about devoid of anything remotely related to sustenance. “I’m out of coffee! How about some juice?”

“A’ight.”

Mark opened the refrigerator, which was in the same shape as the cupboards, and grabbed the lone orange juice container. He shook it, checked the date, then opened it and took a whiff. It’s gone bad. “Juice is out, too! How about some water?”

“Nah, I’m straight.”

Mark shrugged and put the container back into the refrigerator. “I sure could use some coffee.” He mumbled.

Mark reentered the living room and pulled a chair up to the table, right beside Darryl. “Sorry about being such a bad host, but that’s one of the drawbacks of being a bachelor. Nobody around to remind you you’re out of the essentials like coffee, bread, toilet paper. What about you? You married?”

Darryl dug a wallet out of his pocket and rummaged for a picture that he handed to Mark. “Yeah, that’s my wife, Lashawndra, and my baby boy, Tyriq.”

“Beautiful family. Your son has his mother’s eyes. You must be proud.”

“Yeah, they my world. I’d do just about anything for them.”

Mark returned the picture to Darryl. “Cool. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Darryl placed his portfolio on the table, unzipped it and turned it in Mark’s direction as he opened it. Mark’s eyes passed over the pages quickly and he flipped through at a speed faster than Darryl appreciated. Darryl’s glance darted back and forth between the portfolio and Mark’s expressionless face. When Mark got to the end, he flipped all the pages back to the beginning.

“Well?” Darryl asked, hopefully.

“Well, your work shows promise—”

“I knew it! Didn’t I tell you your submission editor was weak?”

“—However, you still need to work on a few areas.”

“Like what?” Darryl sounded more defensive than he wanted to.

“Hey, don’t get discouraged by my criticism. Very few people have broken into the comic industry without receiving at least a dozen rejections. A little hard work and a lot of practice is all you need—”

“Now you startin’ to sound like your form letter! I didn’t come all this way to hear you recite that mess verbatim!”

“You want to know what I really think?”

“Hell yeah!”

Mark shrugged. “You asked for it.” He started flipping through the portfolio pages again, this time stopping at certain pages. “I can tell that you never studied anatomy outside of copying it from a comic book. You’re inventing muscles that don’t exist, at least not on humans. And look at your facial expressions. Why are all your characters yelling or gritting their teeth? Not to mention the stiff poses, the lack of background detail, you don’t spot enough black and your perspective is — just plain bad.”

“Damn. Then what’s good about it?”

“Your pencil lines are solid and you understand line weight, which’ll make your inker happy. Your panel layouts are good, too. You just need to fill them with more believable and fluid poses and background detail.”

“Man, you don’t know what you talkin’ about!” Darryl reached into the inside pocket of his portfolio, pulled out a comic and slapped it down on the table. “I been published before! If my art was so jacked up, why’d they print my work?”

Mark picked up the comic, looked at the cover with a mixture of astonishment and disgust. His expression didn’t change as he flipped through the comic. “Nigga Press presents The Togetha Niggaz? What’s this?”

“That’s real life, son! It’s about these four bangers, real hardcore street niggaz, that form this posse and be makin’ mad cheddah an’ be smokin’ corrupt cops an’ whatnot! This book be keepin’ it real! What you know ’bout that?”

“Real? Is this what it’s like in your neighborhood?”

“For real!”

“In Ithaca?”

“What you tryin’ to say?”

Mark shook his head and tossed the comic on the portfolio. “Nothing. Forget it. Look, congratulations, you’ve been published. Maybe if you put together another story, they’ll print more of your work.”

“Can’t. They ain’t in business no more.” Darryl mumbled.

“I’m not surprised.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re kidding, right? Nigga Press? Negro, please. I’m surprised a printer actually wasted paper on that garbage! And you wonder why they published your work? Your art was the best thing in there! They’d be stupid to turn you away! But your work on The Togetha Niggaz is a far cry from commercial standards. I’m not trying to tell you what to work on but damn, couldn’t you find another company to work for?”

“What you think I’m tryin’ to do now? But fake-ass companies like yours be frontin’! Y’all don’t respect a brothas potential! So if Nigga Press is the only company tryin’ to big up a black man, what am I supposed to do? Say no? Then what? Then I’m ass out all around!”

“You have a point. Look—”

“An’ why you judgin’ me, huh? I ain’t even into “reality” comics, no how. That’s a’ight for TV an’ movies an’ books an’ junk, but comics, to me, comics is always ’bout superheroes. Cosmic brothas, mystic sistas, yanno what I’m talkin’ ’bout? But them kinda books, and the companies that make ’em, when they do come out, they don’t last that long. You in the business, you must know somethin’. Why’s that? Why do most of the comics with people of color as the star fail so fast?”

“You looking for some special answer? They fail for the same reason a good majority of the white hero titles fail. Poorly written stories with stereotypical, underdeveloped characters. Poorly financed. Poorly marketed. Poorly illustrated in what is commercially thought of as the “urban style”. All of the above. None of the above. Take your pick. But whatever you choose, realize that it’s only half true. The reality is that most minority-themed comics are nothing more than rehashes of successful white comics done in black face.”

“I hear what you sayin’! White corporate America don’t want to publish no minority titles, but they can’t show their racists faces to the public, so they hire Uncle Toms to put out this substandard crap on purpose just so they can say, We put it out there, but there just doesn’t seem to be an interest for this type of material.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Here we go again with that white corporate conspiracy to keep the black man down. One day I would love to have a professional conversation with a person of color and not have the white man is the devil pop up in the exchange. Don’t think I’ll ever live to see the day, though.”

“Somebody gotta keep it real!”

“Look, white-owned or not, any publisher would be stupid to intentionally produce a product that was substandard.”

“But now you’re contradictin’ yourself!”

“No, I’m not. You’re not listening to me. Truth: a good majority of the minority comics published are crap. Truth: a good majority of the non-ethnic comics published today are crap. Truth: the number of high-quality non-ethnic comics on the stands greatly outweigh the number of quality minority comics, but a large part of that is due to the sheer number of non-ethnic titles being flooded into an oversaturated market.”

“Yeah, I been readin’ ’bout that comic glut an’ whatnot, so I can’t argue with that. I’m just curious about why minority titles don’t do well. I buy every title I know is published by a black man representin’ our people.”

“Even if the book is bad?”

“Come again?”

“You said you buy every minority title published by a black man. I asked you if you also bought the books that were of poor content quality?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Why?”

“To show a brotha support! White man ain’t gonna buy the book an’ put no paper in a black man’s pocket!”

“I understand supporting black-owned enterprises, but don’t we as a black consumer have the right to demand quality? Don’t we as black professionals owe it to one another to pull a brother’s coattail to shoddy workmanship? If you bought a chair from a black carpenter and it fell apart the first time you sat in it, wouldn’t you hold him accountable for giving you a quality product? Of course, you would. Why should it be any different when it comes to comics?”

“Yeah, well, that’s an interestin’ theory an’ I’m tryin’ to stay open-minded, but I get this vibe that you tryin’ to come off all superior on me. Lookin’ down on my published work, an’ all—”

“I’m just telling you like it is, or how I know it to be. But since we’re keeping it real here, I’ve got a question for you. Do you really think that the artwork in your portfolio is of a professional level?”

“Well, that’s not my most recent work—”

“Then why’d you bring it?”

“Cause the new stuff’s not finished yet. Work got me tired, black. When I gets home, I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout nothin’ but eatin’ and bustin’ z’s. But that sample’s the same one that got me a job with Nigga Press, so I figured—”

“You figured that it’s the kind of work all publishers are looking for?”

“Right.”

“How many publishers have you sent it to?”

“Not includin’ you? ‘Bout twenty, thirty.”

“Besides Nigga Press, who else offered you a job?”

“Nobody.”

“Then that should’ve told you something!”

“Why you attackin’ a brotha like that? Why’re you, a black man, endorsin’ the same two-dimensional thinkin’ that the white comic book industry uses to hold you down?”

“Endorsing? What the hell are you talking about? What’s me not thinking your samples are of a professional quality got to do with the white comic book industry?”

“Yanno what? Forget it, dog. I’m wastin’ my time here. In fact, yanno what else? Your comics suck! I only came here ’cause I figured I’d help a brotha out, know what I’m sayin’? But if you too stupid or too proud to accept my offer, I’ll just take my samples to a bigga, betta company. An’ I want you to remember this day, son, cause when I blow up, I’m comin’ back for that apology. Best believe that.”

“Oh, I’m too small for you now, huh? Whatever. See ya. Don’t let the doorknob hit you where the Good Lord split you.”

“Yeah, you like one of them tiny little Oreos that come inna cereal box.”

“And I’m an Oreo?”

“Think you ain’t? What relationship you got with the black comic readin’ community? What black comic associations you belong to? What black creators do you mentor?”

“What’s that got to do with you and your samples?”

“Why’re you ducking the question?”

“Because it bears no relevance—”

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t have time for this—”

“Answer the question!”

“Fine! I don’t belong to any black organizations, happy?”

“Why?”

“I don’t owe you any explanations—”

“Why?”

“I’ve had enough of this! Get out of my house!”

“Why!”

“Because black people can’t organize, that’s why! You think when I entered this game I didn’t want to make change, unite the black community, put out a product that would help uplift the race?” Mark’s tone took on a sermon-like quality. “And there are a hundred people just like me that start out trying to do the same thing, dreaming of the same outcome, outreaching the same hand, making the same offers! And you know what happens? White people do laugh at us, but it’s not the ones you think! It’s the ghosts of the whites from over 400 hundred years ago that are laughing! Cause they planted a seed in us that’s growing stronger with each generation! That seed causes us to challenge each other rather than organize! What do we call it? Crabs in a barrel syndrome? And it kills us every time! And why do we need that? Why do we have to make ourselves look bigger by tearing another brother down?”

“An’ you think you ain’t a goddam crab in that same mutha fuckin’ barrel? How you figga? Every time you turn a blind eye to a black man tryin’ make endz, or look right through a brotha that needs help, ain’t you holdin’ him down? Stoppin’ him from climbin’ out that barrel?”

“You want me to help you to make it in this industry? All right. I’ll give you a nickel’s worth of free advice. Stop looking for an excuse to hate a successful brother and take a tip from the white man, instead of blaming him for your inadequacies! Learn the comic industry first. Study it. Understand what makes it work. Understand what it is. Despite the fact that you grew up on comics and love to read them and drawing comic characters has always been a hobby, this is a business. A real business. Understand how a business operates. Study the mistakes and accomplishments of the people who are doing what you want to do. And forget about the instant gratification. Pay your dues. Do what it takes to break into the business. By any means necessary? By all means that don’t require you to compromise your beliefs or dreams.”

“Paper must be good.” Darryl said under his breath.

“For what?”

“Your job.”

“What, publishing? I don’t know, I make a living.”

“Nah, your other job.”

“What other job?”

“The one the white man pays you for.”

“What?”

“For doin’ his job for him.”

“Why do you keep bringing the white man into this conversation? There’s just the two of us standing here and no white man in shouting distance.”

“Matter of opinion.”

“Meaning what?”

“There’s always been so-called brothas like you out there, livin’ all comfortable in the white man’s world, afraid to break the shackles, fight the massahs, own your destiny as a free black man!” Darryl held his arms out in front of him, wrists pressed together as if they were shackled. “C’mon, say it with me now, Give us us free!”

“What do you know about me that allows you to come into my house and attack my character?”

“Well, I know you ain’t stupid. White man don’t hire stupid brothas. Probably sent you to college to get that degree in self-loathin’. What was your major, black? How To Discreetly Hate Anyone Darker Than Milk?”

Mark let out an ironic chuckle. “I get it. It all makes sense now. You can’t break into the comic business and it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you need to study and practice harder for your work to take on commercial qualities. It’s all my fault. I’m a hater hired by the white man to single-handedly keep you from entering the market and toppling the great white comic empire. None of this could possibly be your fault, right?”

“You can’t blame a victim of America, dog, cause that what we are, victims! Brought here against our will, enslaved, beaten, killed, forced to embrace a culture not our own, forced to forget our heritage, deny our birthright! An’ you’d know all this if you were a real black man!”

“Oh, give that old, tired downtrodden for 400 years bullshit rhetoric a rest!”

“Do you even notice what you doin’? Every time I try to drop a little science on you, you respond with contempt. Did you learn that from the whites?”

“I’m not afraid of a goddamned thing! Now pack your things and get out of my house!”

“Oh, you not afraid, huh? Then why won’t you tell me what you thought of The Togetha Niggaz?”

“What I thought of—? It’s a revolting piece of shit, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”

“And Nigga Press?”

“All that ranting you do about the evil white conspiracy and you can’t see?”

“See what? Drop science.”

“Darryl, if there’s anybody that absolutely does not pose a threat to white corporate America, it’s illiterate, ignorant assholes like Nigga Press that perpetuate the negative stereotypes that castrate us as a race!” Mark’s calm and professionalism have unraveled at the edges. “But you can’t really blame them, can you? That’s our one claim to fame. Who needs the white man to hold us down and pick us apart? To devalue the black family structure and make us apathetic to the crimes we commit on our own kind? We do the job better than they do, cause we work twice as hard at it! In fact, if Nigga Press was smart, they would’ve sent copies of that garbage to the KKK! I bet they would’ve received enough funding to put Marvel and DC to shame!”

“All that, huh?”

“Take a look at that book again! This time try to be objective!”

“Can’t do that, dog.”

“Why not?”

“Cause I’m Nigga Press.”

“What?” Mark asked, confused.

Darryl grabbed the comic book, opened the cover and shoved it at Mark. “Read the indicia. ‘Sides bein’ one of the artists, I’m the writer, editor, publisher. Just like you, only different. Only real.”

“But why?”

“Why what? Why Nigga Press? Why alienate the white audience? Cause I don’t give a fuck about comic sales in a white comic store! Cause I wanted to create somethin’ the black youth could relate to! Cause I believe in our segregation from the white supremacist comic book industry that is determined to remain ignorant of any other culture than their own! Cause I am who I am, an’ who I am is a servant to my people! Cause I knew nobody else’d take the lead, so I became the mutha fuckin’ pioneer!”

“No. I no longer care why that trash was published. My question is why all the pretense?”

“Ever see that commercial with that mutha fucka wearing the Riddler suit with all them question marks on it an’ shit? He’s always talkin’ about all this government money floatin’ around out there, an’ white people are on it with a quickness! So I did some researchin’ on my own an’ found out there’s much benjamins out there for minority businesses! Free money! An’ all you gotta do is meet some stupid criteria! Like being black in America ain’t criteria enough.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. And why come to me if my product is so bitch-ass?”

Darryl hesitated a long moment then shrugged. “Guess it don’t matta if you know, cause my game’s so fulla Machiavellianism you can’t touch it.”

“Machiavellianism. Riiiight.” Mark smirked.

“Yo, I ain’t even hearin’ you, fool, cause you ain’t gots nothin’ to say to me! See, I’m inna process of building a black multi-media alliance, but not just with comics an’ shit. I gots me all kinda TV, film, an’ record producers lined up, I’m talkin’ to magazine an’ book publishers, an’ my cousin even hooked me up with some toy an’ videogame makers. We gots every aspect of entertainment covered an’ it’s all black-owned! Way I figga it, separately we can apply for all that free government money an’ start poolin’ it all together into the umbrella company of the alliance! But before I start makin’ offers, I gotta make sure I come correct an’ flush out all you fake-ass Uncle Tom-owned businesses. So, go back to playin’ it safe in that lily white imaginary hater world you livin’ in, Chicken George, an’ give my regards to Mickey an’ Pluto an’ all them other mutha fuckas!”

Darryl snatched his comic out of Mark’s hand, shoved it back in his portfolio and turned to leave.

“Whereabouts, Darryl?”

Darryl stopped and cut Mark a glance. “What?”

“You said you traveled all the way from Ithaca this morning. Whereabouts?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I have friends and family in Ithaca. Maybe you know some of them? Maybe they know you? Hell, only so many Africans were brought over here, and even less survived slavery — we might be related. So where are you from?”

Darryl hesitated. “Greenville.”

“Greenville, huh? Funny, I know Ithaca pretty well and I don’t recall there being a Greenville.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a small hood an’ folks pretty much keep to theyselves.”

“Yeah, I guess it’d have to be small for me not to have heard of it. Most folks probably steer clear of it, being so dangerous, and all. Or there’s one more solution — you’re full of shit.”

“Yo, you best raise up off me!”

“Or what? You’re going to bust a cap in my ass? Violate that strong code of black ethics you’ve been slinging around here by participating in a little black on black violence?”

“I’ll do what I gots to do, bitch!”

“I ain’t your bitch, Darryl. Or your dog. Or your son. It’s either Mark or Mr. Brown, pick one, but if you call me outside my name one more time, I’ll show you how we get down where I come from.”

“Man, forget you! You ain’t worth the jail time! I’m ghost!”

“Why are you running from it, Darryl?”

“From what?”

“The truth. You accused me of refusing to acknowledge and speak it, but of the two of us, you’re the one with the real problem.”

“You the one livin’ the snow white lie—”

“Don’t play me, Darryl, play Lotto. You’ll get better odds.”

“Anybody played you, you played yourself!”

“That’s what you’d like me to believe, isn’t it, Darryl? It’d let you walk out of here with a little face.”

“Whatever you need to believe—”

“No, it isn’t whatever, it’s the truth. What, you think you’re the first? First artist to ever sneak through and get a private session? First person of color to accuse me of selling out? First person that thought I owed them something just because of the color of their skin? I’ve been doing this for eight-plus years, you tell me what the odds are that you’d be the first to do any of these things.”

“I don’t care.” Darryl shrugged.

“All right, Mr. Machiavellianism, how about this, Why the portfolio?”

“What?”

“If your game was as tight as you wanted me to believe, then why didn’t you bring your research with statistics and figures that supported your proposed idea? A model business plan? Something? Instead, you brought artwork, and poor artwork at that?”

“I ain’t need to bring you jack!”

“And why meet at my house? I’m here once, maybe twice a month. Most times I sleep at the office. So how did you know I was here today? Luck? Coincidence? Or were you watching me?”

“So now I’m a stalker?”

“For how long? A couple of days? A week? Longer? And if you could afford to spend so much time watching me, that means that you probably don’t have a job, not a regular one anyway.”

“You ain’t gots to worry ’bout me gettin’ paid! I gets mine, black!”

“And since I’m on a roll here—”

“You ain’t on nothin’!”

“—I’m going to go out on a limb and say this probably isn’t even about you, is it? Awful lot of trouble to go through for a comic job for yourself. It’s about your family, isn’t it? Unless that picture you showed me was a lie, too? What was it? Some street ho and her crack baby?”

“Don’t you talk about my family, punk! An’ what you know ’bout that? What you know ’bout tryin’ to raise a family, huh? What you know ’bout me?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about raising a family, but I do know, or I’m almost certain that you really came here looking for a job, didn’t you? And I can’t fault you for that, trying to do right by your family. That’s actually pretty noble. I could have done without the lies, attitude and language, though.”

“Fault me? Fuck you! I ain’t come here for no mutha fuckin’ job! Job? What that mean? J.O.B.? Just Over Broke? I ain’t about that! I’ma get paid an’ blow up much spots, know what I’m sayin’?”

“This isn’t about a job? Fine, then prove it.”

“I ain’t provin’ shit!”

Mark stood up, walked around the edge of the table and put out his hand. “I’m about to offer you a one year contract with Perceived Onslaught. That’s a year’s salary guaranteed, provided that you show up for work everyday and perform the tasks assigned to you. If it works out after that time, we’ll renegotiate your contract. All you have to do is shake my hand to cement the deal. And if I’m wrong, if this isn’t about a job, or the money, or feeding your family, then just walk out that door. No harm, no foul.”

“You so fulla shit—”

“I never offer what I’m not prepared to back up. I’m a smarter businessman than that. The choice is yours. It always has been. It always will be. You decide what course your life takes. All black men do. Many of us just don’t want to live up to the responsibility of our choices. I don’t really know you, but I don’t think you’re like that. So where do we, two black men with not a white man in sight, where do we go from here?”

Darryl just stood there for a long minute, head hung low, thinking. Reflecting on his past. Reevaluating his present. Reconnoitering the paths for his future. “You ever do somethin’ on impulse? Seems right at the time. Harmless. Then after it’s done you see the effects an’ you wonder, Why I ain’t seen that inna first place?” He said in a low voice. “Wasn’t nothin’ political ’bout Nigga Press. It was just a comic, yanno? People don’t take comics serious. With all the gangsta rap an’ thug life hype goin’ ’round, an’ people gettin’ mad loot offa it, I figured I’d get me a slice, too. No harm in that, right? I mean, I ain’t create none of that stuff, an’ with or without me, it’s still gonna play on, right? So, what’s one comic gonna hurt? Get in quick, make some paper an’ move on before anybody knows I’m Audi. Nobody’d care, right?”

“But my wife did.” Darryl continued. “Said I got a son an’ should be settin’ an example cause what other role models is he gonna have if he can’t respect his father? An’ I ain’t wanna hear that. Told her she messin’ up the cash flow, but she was right, tho. So, I ain’t say nothin’ else ’bout it. Just packed up the copies of the books that didn’t sell an’ stuffed them in a closet. I figured it was over, but she never lost that look in her eye, like she was ashamed of me or some shit. An’ when I lost my telemarketin’ job, shit started gettin’ worse. Ever try to live on unemployment checks with bills comin’ due an’ three mouths to feed? An’ one of them mouths is too young to understand why there ain’t enough food in the house to get fed three times a day.”

Mark’s hand remained outstretched. “Darryl, you don’t have to do this. I’m not here to judge you.”

“But even now, when I got nothin’, I still got my pride. An’ I don’t need nobody’s handouts.”

“Handouts are what you get from the government. A hand up is what you get from a brother. A true brother. And trust me, everybody on my payroll earns that money. My name isn’t Salvation and I’m not trying to raise an Army. Work or begone is the company motto. But if you’re loyal to the goal of trying to make my dreams a reality, then there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help you—”

Mark took a few steps towards Darryl. “—I’d even meet you half way.”

Darryl knew it was do or die time. Put up or shut up. He stepped up and gripped Mark’s hand firmly.

“Welcome on board.” Mark said.

“But I thought you weren’t diggin’ my artwork?”

“What’s your artwork have to do with your job?”

“Then what I’ma be doin’?”

“I like that idea about the black media alliance. Think you could pull it off?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Then we’ll start mapping out a game plan tomorrow, but on two conditions—”

Darryl eyed the man suspiciously. “What?”

“One: Nigga Press never rears its head anywhere near my company and its business dealings, in fact this is the last time I hear the word Nigga at all from you.”

Darryl put a hand in the air. “Word is bond.”

“And two: you wait here until I get dressed.”

“Why?”

“Why? You bust into my house and disturb my sleep on my day off and you think you can just get away with it?”

Well, I still can be, especially if George Eliot’s words ring true—It is never too late to be what you might have been.It was the 90’s and the independent film movement was just beginning to blossom. I was lucky enough to publish a line of comic books and graphic novels during the independent boom of the comic book industry, and wanted to step boldly into the world of cinema.

I took a two-day Hollywood film course and filled with intent and blissful ignorance, I wrote the story you’re about to read. Based very loosely on a series of events that happened while I published comics and was foolish enough to list my home address in the indicia of the books, which resulted in more than a few unwanted visitors.

Principle photography was to begin in September 2001, but the events of that month pushed the schedule back a few years.

I eventually filmed it and while it’s not Oscar worthy, I learned a valuable lesson about storytelling—overwriting, on the nose dialogue, and editing, in particular. Still, it was a hell of an adventure.

Oh, and if you’re curious to see how the film turned out, you can catch it here:

When I was asked to deliver this eulogy, I was terrified. I am not the best orator in the family, that honor goes to Arthur, my brother, who couldn’t be in attendance because he and his family lived too far away, as opposed to my youngest sister, Ethel, who simply couldn’t be bothered to pack up their families again for a repeat memorial service. You see, we buried my great grandfather Walter two short weeks ago and while I understand the inconvenience, family is family and they should have made it their business to be here, if not to offer support to those of us this passing strikes hardest, then at least out of familial obligation. If it sounds like I’m bitter, I am, and I apologize for burdening you with it but not sorry for voicing the way I feel. That was one of the lessons I learned from the person we’re memorializing today.

This woman gave life to the woman who gave life to the woman who gave life to me and I owe her so much because I have a good life. If it’s true that grandparents give us a sense of who we are and where we come from, then great-grandparents let us know how far we’ve come and the sacrifices that had to be made for us to exist.

Today, as we bid farewell to GiGiMaw Eleanor, I realize the size of the hole left in my heart and in my family. I am truly blessed to have so many strong women in my life and it is extremely rare for a relationship three generations removed to be so crucial and so enduring but then Eleanor was that phenomenal sort of person every single day of her life. And you don’t have to take my word for it, others will come up and tell stories that will make you laugh and fill your hearts with joy and hope. I, on the other hand, wish to tell a different story, one that few of you know but I think it’s time to clear the air of ghosts and secrets from the past.

Eleanor and Walter had two children, a daughter, my wonderful GiMaw Ruth, who is with us today, and her older brother, Ned, who is no longer with us. From the stories Eleanor told me, Ned, the granduncle I never had the honor of meeting, was an active little boy, rambunctious and always full of playful mischief, but he was kindhearted, especially to his baby sister. Always the defender of the weak and a paladin of justice, he had the makings for growing into someone important, someone the world needed.

When he was just six years old he was the victim of a hit and run which cut his life short. Alerted by the neighbors, Eleanor and Walter rushed to the scene of the accident and gathered up their son’s body and immediately carried him home as not to cause a spectacle. They carefully and lovingly cleaned Ned head to toe, dressed him in his Sunday best and placed him on their bed in the space between them and mourned their loss in private all through the night.

This was in a time before the dead were taken to morgues, back when it was the family’s responsibility to take care of funeral arrangements themselves. My great grandparents were poor, like nearly everyone else in town, so these two people, these two parents, dug their son’s grave with their bare hands, wrapped him in his bedsheet and placed his body into the ground, burying his corpse handful by trembling handful.

Eleanor and Walter divorced each other two months later. They were still in their twenties and chose to remain living under the same roof for their daughter’s sake, together but separated. Eighty plus years of sleeping in their marriage bed with a space forever between them where their phantom son lay, sharing an experience that was so painful that they couldn’t risk casting an eye upon the other for fear of reopening a wound that never fully closed.

But as I mentioned, they were private people who managed to keep that pain to themselves and had I not known the story I would have been hardpressed to spot their unhappiness whenever we stopped round for a visit. Up until the end, GiGiMaw Eleanor had more energy and showed more interest in my life and the lives of my children than anyone I’ve ever known. No offense, Mom.

What made my great-grandmother special? So wonderful? As the relative who lived the closest, she was always present, part of our everyday lives in such a tangible way, baking and cooking and babysitting and taking our daughters for surprise days of shopping at the mall.

You impacted my life in so many ways, GiGiMaw Eleanor, helped shape who I am, who my children are. You influenced all of us so greatly and I will always love you and save a special corner of my heart to keep you with me because you held the family together.

And in keeping with your tradition, I wanted you to know that we are not only laying you to rest today. It took some doing but we located Ned’s original burial spot and we’re having your son reinterred with you and GiGPaw Walter in the place he never ceased to exist, in the space between the both of you because family needs to be together.